


All the Things You Prayed For

by anonymousAlchemist, marywhale



Series: The Avenger Zone [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Marvel Cinematic Universe Fusion, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brainwashing, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Recovery, Romance, Slow Burn, Torture, Violence, dramatic spy assassin romance, every story is a love story, everyone else is a surprise, less dramatic superhero romance, lup is cap, superheroes as a shorthand for soap opera, taako is bucky, updates wrong thursdays
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2019-06-19 03:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 127,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15501099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousAlchemist/pseuds/anonymousAlchemist, https://archiveofourown.org/users/marywhale/pseuds/marywhale
Summary: Taako's been dead for two years. Taako's been dead for seven decades. Depends how you count it.Her brother is dead and Lup’s a whole lifetime into the future. It’s a brave new world out there and she’s trying not to think about it too hard. She gets the feeling that if she starts thinking, she won’t ever stop, and she can’t afford to be out of commission. She's the only Captain America the new century’s got.Lup is Cap, Taako fell from a train, and eventually all ghosts come in from the cold.  You guessed it—it's a TAZ/Marvel shakeup baby. We're bringing the party to you.





	1. In Living Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we've been obsessed with this AU for the past four months, enjoy! <3

They never ask Lup about her brother. They ask “How are you liking the future?” and “What was it like during the war?” and she smiles her widest grin and says “I think it’s fuckin’ excellent” or “Pretty shit, honestly” because even when she’s lying through her teeth, she’s never been one for self-censorship.

But nobody asks her about Taako.

Captain America was always two people, she wants to scream. They’ve only got half her heart here in the future. The other half is frozen, his corpse somewhere at the bottom of a crevasse in the Alps.

They’re probably trying to be considerate. She has good hearing — she’s heard SHIELD agents and secretaries whispering about _only a few months from the war, for her_ , and _the poor dear_ , and she _hates_ it. She’s a few months from the front, sure. A few months and she’s spitting mad. She gambled everything she had for everything she ever cared about (except for her brother) and the cost was the rest of her life. Loss of control over the story that got told after she was gone. Nobody expected her to be back. Neither did she.

Now she’s the face of Captain America and her brother is a sidekick. It doesn’t sit right with her.

Kravitz, of all people, is the first to ask. They’re at the Smithsonian a week before the Captain America exhibit opens. It’s sort of embarrassing. The curators came to her, hat in hand, and said they’d been planning the exhibit for nearly a year, now, but since she’s back back it seems rather _gauche_ , and if she wants, they’ll tear the whole thing down. But, they said sheepishly, if she wouldn’t _mind_ , they could switch out “CAPTAIN AMERICA’S HEROIC DEATH” for “REBIRTH, AND THE BATTLE OF NEW YORK.”

The curators had looked so _sad_. so she gave them the green-light. Honestly, her new team needed all the good press it could get. But she still wanted a chance to give the last sign-off before the exhibit opened. So, here she is, a week before the CAPTAIN AMERICA: REBIRTH exhibit opens at the Air and Space Museum, Kravitz trailing her like a shadow.

He’d shown up out of nowhere while she was killing her bike’s ignition. “Protection detail,” he’d said, and the set of his mouth looked maybe like he was joking. Maybe he just wanted her to have some company.

Kravitz is hard to read. Lup thinks maybe spies are just like that — she remembers talking with members of the S.S.R. during the war, thinks about the way she can’t read the Director’s expressions half the time, the way the SHIELD agents talk through hushed tones and meaningful glances around her. She’s getting awfully tired of the slippery bastards after the last couple years. Kravitz is okay, though. His sense of humor reminds her of Taako’s — and that’s a train of thought she doesn’t want to examine too closely.

Taako has been dead for two years. Taako has been dead for seven decades. It really depends how you count it.

Her brother is dead and Lup’s a whole lifetime into the future. It’s a brave new world out there and she’s trying not to think about it too hard. She gets the feeling that if she starts thinking, she won’t ever stop, and she’s the only Captain America the new century’s got so she can’t _afford_ to be out of commission.

Lup and Kravitz wander through the exhibition. It’s really tasteful, all nicely spot-lit with little blurbs pasted on next to the stuff on display. She’s gotta hand it to the Smithsonian folks, but it’s still weird seeing her history dissected. She stares at the ephemera of her life, laid out on display, and it makes her feel some sort of something. They’ve got all the stuff from when the brass had her working as a showgirl, selling war bonds with the USO. And that’s the jacket she thought she lost in England. She wonders where they got it from — maybe Sildar found it. Wonders if they’ll mind her stealing it back. It was a _nice_ jacket.

Kravitz is quiet. He stays a few steps behind her as they move through exhibit after exhibit — past neatly detailing the serum and the war and the fight to end it. As if her life was linear.

There’s a dark room set up with rows of benches and a projector. Kravitz sits next to her to watch a five-minute film reel, played on loop. One of the short films the army’s propaganda machine made about her and the Howlies for the folks back home. The footage is jittery black-and-white — converted from the original reels to digital because stuff that was high tech six months ago for Lup is a delicate archival record now.

In this film, Taako and her are cheesing for the camera, as pre-written lines that flash at the bottom of the screen, something about “freedom!” and “justice!” and “we’re gonna beat those Nazi bastards!” The movie itself is silent, but Lup remembers what they were talking about — it was the first film reel they did. On screen, Lup points down the camera lens, then she and Taako double over laughing.

It was early in the war.

“The two of you look close,” Kravitz says. A diplomatic understatement. On screen Taako and her have identical gap-toothed smiles, the casual intimacy of an arm thrown over a shoulder.

“We were,” Lup says. “It was just the two of us for a long time, you know? He’s like, the only fucking family I had, especially after our aunt died. God, he was like — shit, this is gonna sound cheesy — but he’s the only reason the whole Captain America thing even _worked_.”

It’s surprisingly nice to be able to talk about him. On screen, Taako sticks his tongue out. Lup’s heart aches.

“What was he like?” Kravitz asks, not looking away from the film. It must be weird for him, seeing her there. Lup is grateful for the lack of scrutiny.

She has to think a moment. How to describe Taako? It’s like describing the back of her hand. She knows everything about him — knows him too well to narrow him down to a sound bite.

On screen, Taako elbows her. She elbows him back. They glance at something beyond the camera.

“He was _smart,_ ” Lup says. “Like, real smart? He woulda loved the future. We went to the Hallwinter Expo the night before he shipped out to the front, and he tried to convince me to steal Sildar’s flying car. He was kind of an asshole, and like, real dramatic all the time. Christ, the amount of times I came home to him whining about something dumb. Soft spot for kids, which was stupid, cause first we had absolutely _zip_ in the way of cash, and then we were in a _warzone_. He was — he cared a lot? He’d give you shit if you called him on it, though. He was... fuck, I don’t know. He was just _Taako_ , you know?”

They watch Lup and Taako on screen double over in laughter again, the loop repeating.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Kravitz says carefully, and it sounds practiced — but he’s trying. She appreciates that.

Lup snorts. “You know? You’re the first person to say that to me in the future.” She stands, brushes invisible dirt off of her jeans. “Well, c’mon, we don’t have all day. I wanna go rip the curators a new one. The _one and only_ Captain America, my ass.”

#

**_Somewhere in Europe, 1944_ **

“Hey T, got a minute?” Lup leans over Taako’s chair, sticking her pointy chin on his head and her arms on his shoulders.

He glances up and sticks his tongue out at his sister. “I’m _busy_ ,” he says, gesturing at his hand of cards, the guys huddled around the table at the back of the bar, the bottle of whiskey that came from who-knows-where. “I’m _bonding_.”

“You’re cheating,” Lup says.

Taako gives her a longsuffering look. “Yeah, alright, I’m cheating,” he admits, folding his hand. “Game’s over kids. When Cap calls, you gotta answer.”

The guys — she has no idea who these soldiers are, though they’re wearing U.S. Army uniforms — look torn between genuine irritation at getting fleeced and starry-eyed wonder at seeing Captain America in all her glory. She’s even carrying the shield.

“Like you ever listen,” she says, flicking his braid. It’s ragged at the ends, crispy from being too close to the conflagration that destroyed the Hunger base. She’s surprised his hair is even long enough to braid, even if it is a stubby thing that only extends an inch or two off his scalp. “C’mon, walk with me.”

He sighs theatrically and scoops his winnings — a chocolate bar, three cigarettes, a woman’s bracelet — into his hands before standing. “Thanks for the game, boyos.”

“Oh, get outta here.” One of the guys waves a hand angrily. Lup wonders if he’s the one who lost the bracelet. The man across from him turns to his friend and murmurs: “Did we just get had by _Cap’s brother?_ ”

“Ch’yeah you did, don’t tell me you don’t see the family resemblance,” Taako says, turning back, looking ready to get in a pointless argument. He likes to hear himself talk too much.

The man startles. Lup suspects he thought he was talking too quietly for anyone to hear. She suspects that if she weren’t _enhanced,_ she wouldn’t have picked up his words.

Taako also heard him.

Lup flicks his ear to head off the scuffle. “C’mon, T. I was bein’ serious.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, alright Lulu,” he says, and throws an arm around her shoulder, finally consenting to leave now that he can pretend to be the one making the decision.

She lets him. Taako’s touchy that way. Before the war, she’d have probably called him on it, shoved him off of her shoulder, but two weeks ago she hauled him out of a Hunger war camp, off of an _operating table_. So. That deserves a little consideration.

Lup’s glad to see him pulling a con on some hapless victims. He’s acting like himself again.

As they walk, Taako offers her the bracelet and Lup shakes her head. He fastens it around his own wrist instead. It glints in the moonlight as he jangles it, a sharp contrast to the ragged uniform he's wearing and the badly patched jacket he scrounged up somewhere. Back home, he always took meticulous care of his clothing.

Taako shoves the cigarettes in a pocket and partially unwraps the chocolate. “You want some?” he asks, offering it to her.

“Yeah, thanks babe,” Lup says, accepting the chocolate and taking an unladylike bite before handing it back. “Sorry to pull you away.”

“S’fine,” Taako says through his own mouthful of chocolate. “I have _no_ fuckin’ idea who those fools are, anyway. What's up?”

She shrugs. “I'll tell you back in our room.” He gives her a sideways glance and she shrugs again.

Half an hour ago, she was in a basement with a half-dozen assorted brass. It was tense as fuck. Lup’s real annoying for them — a showgirl turned soldier who, two weeks ago, single handedly destroyed a Hunger facility and rescued an entire POW camp without permission from her commanding officer. Hell, she didn’t even _have_ a commanding officer. As soon as she’d stepped back on base, accompanied by the prisoners she’d freed, the journalists had been all over the story. Now the army can’t sweep her under the rug anymore. Captain America’s on her way to becoming a legend. There's talk of _comic books_.

She's still hanging around base, the show tour canceled, the brass trying to figure out what to do with her, with the prisoners she rescued, the remnants of the 107th. Taako.

They're making her a real captain, backdating an order sending her into Azzano. They've told her that if she steps out of line one more time, she's facing a court martial. She should be facing a court martial _now_ for what she did, but instead Hallwinter and Davenport are gunning for her to get her own unit — a small team for highly specialized missions, specifically designed to counter the Hunger, or the Nazi “weird science” division, as Hallwinter likes to call it.

"I made you a _supersoldier!”_ Hallwinter had shouted, slamming his hands against the desk so that all their cups rattled. "The least you could do is _use her!_ "

"I made myself, thank you _very_ much," Lup said, annoyed. "But he's right. I can _lift a fucking tank, babes._. I just destroyed a Hunger base pretty much all on my own, thanks very much."

"And we're well aware of that," one of the higher-ups who got all shirty about the concept of a _super soldier_ said. "But you _disobeyed the chain of command."_ His tone of voice implied that was the highest anathema possible.

In the military, it is. Lup doesn't know how Taako didn't get thrown out on his ear for insubordination during his first week of training.

"Give her a team," Davenport said, rubbing his eyes. The meeting had gone hours longer than it was supposed to. "This isn't — this isn't a _normal_ war. We're going to have to resort to some unorthodox tactics."

Lup liked the sound of that. And she liked the sound of a team — but she can see the looks in the officers' eyes, the expectation of control.

"I get to decide who joins up," she said, standing so everyone could see the star on her chest, the firm set of her shoulders. "Or else I'm letting _everyone_ know exactly how you created Captain America."

Then she turned and left, frustrated. Determined. They're going to give her what she wants. She knows it. But Lup never thought fighting a war would be so much _bureaucracy._ She knows that if she complained to Taako, he'd laugh at her.

Maybe she will. He's quieter than he used to be.

Lup worries about Taako. How could she not? He's been fighting for _months_. She’d received the "MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD" report when the U.S.O. arrived to entertain the camp. She’d pulled him off a Nazi operating table and he’d looked at her like she wasn't real. He had said, voice hoarse: "Shit, of course they'd send me an angel that looked like my _sister._ Thought I told the big guy I wanted _Cary Grant_."

"Dumbass," she’d laugh-sobbed, hauling his arm over her shoulder. "We're both alive, alright? I'm gonna get us outta here."

A couple of steps later, he was no longer stumblin. He looked at her, blood dripping off a cut on his forehead, and said, "Oh fuck! _Lup!_ Lup what the _fuck_ are you doing here? You're supposed to be in _Brooklyn._ " The last sentence was spoken in the most outraged tone she’d ever heard from her brother.

"Less talkin', more walkin," she said, and grabbed him by his elbow and then the whole facility was on fire and Red Skull had peeled the skin off his skull and they didn't have any more time to talk.

On the way back to camp, Taako was subdued, but he stuck to her like a shadow — gave her discrete advice on how to command her rescued troops. His hands shook, the first few days, and he scowled when he caught her watching him.

She didn't stop. She just stopped letting him notice.

"Why were you on an operating table?" she asked on the second day of their march back to the Allied camp, as she watched him hotwire a truck they stole off the side of the road.

"I don't wanna talk about it. Get off my ass, Lu, because you can't say shit, _Cap."_ Taako scowled at her and she’d let it go for the moment.

Lup suspects he's going to lay into her as soon as he's feeling up to it. He’s real mad about the Cap thing.

She let the subject of “what happened in the prison camp” lapse, but Lup's been cataloguing Taako’s differences. Andrews was German. Andrews was forced to work on the project that created Red Skull. Lup can’t help wondering what happened to all that research.

There were puncture marks in Taako's neck when she rescued him — healed over now — and he won't tell her what he was injected with. Maybe he doesn't know.

Taako doesn't _look_ any different, 'cept for the differences that drills and marches and combat and shitty rations make to everyone. A far cry from the man who spent every spare moment at the movies or listening to the radio or hustlin' pool. But Lup doesn't look any different either. Maybe a bit more fit.

She asked Dr. Andrews whether she'd change, back in Brooklyn, the night before they injected her body with serum and showered her in gamma rays. The higher-ups talked about making the perfect soldier. All the other recruits had been _men_ and they’d talked about the serum as something that would turn them into thick-necked meatheads who could pick up a train with their bare hands.

When Lup was born, everyone thought she was a boy. Identical twin boys — her and Taako, like peas in a pod. Lup disabused everyone of that notion pretty quickly. Not that her and Taako stopped being identical. While she'd been perfectly willing to do whatever it took to get to the front faster, she... liked how she looked, the way she filled out her clothes.

It would’ve been a _waste_ of her wardrobe, is all she's saying.

Andrews had told her he didn't know what would change. They'd never tried the serum on a human subject. "It amplifies everything about you, both good and bad," he said. "It turns you into what you have the potential to be, your most inner self."

Then he’d laughed ruefully and admitted he was maybe waxing a little too eloquent. Lup’d laughed too and thanked him anyway, feeling more reassured. She's always known who she is.

But she was still relieved to step out of the machine in her same-old body. The scientists had seemed disappointed at first, but they leaned in real quick once she showed them she could still pick up an entire train car without much effort.

#

Taako falls onto Lup's bed as soon as they return to her quarters. She's got nice digs because she's _Cap_ , and Taako technically doesn't have a place to stay because there's the _entire 107th_ to be rehoused. Not that it matters, because she'd grabbed Taako the second he got out of medical and bullied the quartermaster into getting her a cot for her brother.

She and Taako have been sleeping on Lup's narrow plank of a bed together anyway, just like when they were kids.

Right now, the cot is covered in their clothing, a spare helmet, and a bunch of guns Taako’s somehow managed to collect and keep hold of. Lup has no idea where he got them from. She tosses her shield on to the cot, along with the rest of their mess.

"At least take your fuckin' boots off," she says, sitting on the edge of her bed. "Shove over."

"You take _your_ boots off," Taako mumbles into the pillow, but obliges, scooting up a little, and she lounges against his back.

He turns his head so he's looking vaguely in her direction. "So. What's up?"

"D’you wanna be Captain America?" she asks. Might as well get right into it.

Taako scrambles upright, dislodging Lup, the pillow falling onto the floor in his haste. "What?" he says. " _What?"_

"Do you wanna be Cap?" Lup repeats, moving so he can re-adjust himself. This might not have been the best way to introduce the idea.

"No!" he says. "No, of course I don't wanna be Cap, _you're_ Cap. I have zero interest in bein' Cap, nuh-uh. _Why do you want me to be Captain America?"_ Taako's drawn his knees up to his chest and he's staring at Lup like she said the sky was falling.

"Because they're giving me a team," Lup says.

Taako frowns. "Wait, a _team?_ Okay, back up. Start at the beginning, yeah?"

She sighs, and recounts the meeting, the way the brass looked at her like a piece of meat and how Hallwinter looked at her like a science experiment. The way that Davenport advocated for her to get her own team. The way she felt boxed in by all their expectations, her fear of being controlled.

She tells him about her ultimatum and then she shrugs. "I kinda blackmailed them."

"Up top," Taako says, and she high fives him. "You didn't wrangle an honorable discharge or, like, a pass back to the spangle circuit outta them?"

"I didn't ask," Lup says. "I didn't want to. T, leaving... It wouldn't be the right thing to do. Captain America's more useful — _I'm_ more useful here than back at home."

"Who the fuck cares about being useful?" Taako asks. "I'm useful as _shit_ and I still got captured by _Nazis._ You don't see me trying to stick around."

It’s the opening Lup’s been waiting for.

"They experimented on you, didn't they?"

"What are you even _talking_ about," Taako says, his voice spiraling all high. He’s a terrible liar. “They didn’t — I’m not —” He swings his feet off the bed and starts getting up, but Lup grabs him around the waist, throwing them both back onto the covers. “Hey!”

“You were on an _operating table,_ Taako,” she says, as he tries to wriggle out of her grasp. “And I’ve been thinkin’. There’s no way you coulda made that jump across the broken bridge if you weren’t some sorta _enhanced,_ you recovered _awful quick,_ and you’ve been avoiding the medics, haven’t you?”

“That’s none of your business!” He’s putting up a struggle that even she’s having trouble dealing with, and that’s more proof that he’s also _enhanced_ , because she’s _Captain America._

“You’re my brother, dumbass! Of course it’s my business! What! Happened!” She nearly shouts the last two words, she hadn’t realized she was so _mad_ about all of this, not even at him, just at the whole situation — that she had to rescue him from a Nazi war camp, that he was _caught_ by Nazis, that he enlisted before she did because “one of us had to, Lup, might as well be cha’boy.”

The thing about Taako that everyone forgets — that she forgets, except when she’s confronted with it — is that he’s _sneaky_. He had organized everything meticulously. First he had gotten himself 4-F’ed, somehow, and she’d been fine with that because if her little brother was going to stay safe in Brooklyn then _good._ But then he’d enlisted under _her name_ — skipped his shift at the restaurant to sign up before she could. And so _Lup_ was the one stuck in Brooklyn, trying to untangle all the red tape and bureaucracy, while Taako was sent to training, and then overseas.

She still hasn’t forgiven him for it.

“You don’t just get to hide that sorta shit from me,” she says. “You’re all the family I’ve got; what the fuck did they _do_ to you?”

He stops moving. He taps her arm. “Geddoff, you’re heavy.”

“I mean it,” she says. “Tell me what happened. I’m not letting you go until you do.”

“Cha’boy doesn’t really wanna talk about how he got experimented on by Nazis,” Taako says, and his whining doesn’t cover up the kernel of genuine distress in his voice.

Lup lifts an arm, shifting them so she’s got him more in a hug than in a chokehold. “I know. S’just me though, okay?”

Taako is silent for a long moment. “I think it was the super-soldier serum,” he says. “I think they were tryin’ to replicate whatever Andrews did to you.”

Lup frowns. “Yeah,” she says. “That’s what I thought.”

“S’that why you asked if I wanted to be Captain America?”

“Sort of. Mostly I asked cause you’re my twin brother and the smartest guy I know, and I hear you’re apparently some sorta crazy sniper. And — and I know this is real fuckin selfish, but I want you on my team. And if there’s two Caps, well, that’s gonna be real confusin’ for the Nazis and the Hunger.”

Taako sighs.

“Why couldn’t you just have blackmailed the officers into sending you home?” Taako asks, and keeps talking before she can answer. “Yeah, fuck, like it’s even a question. I mean, if you _put it like that..._ I’ll do it, but I want you to know that I hate this, and I hate you, and you’re a stupid self-sacrificial _dork,_ Lulu. Why couldn’t you be a lil’ more _pragmatic_?”

“Sorry,” Lup says. She is, genuinely contrite, the anger she’s been carrying around with her having banked itself. Now she just feels bad for Taako. Her practical brother stuck with her and her idealism. She knows that being Cap isn’t the most self-preserving of decisions, but she can’t _not_ be Cap now that she’s been given the responsibility. Now that Andrews is dead and she’s the last known supersoldier the world’s going to get. And if her being Cap — if her being on the front lines — stops the war even a _day_ sooner, then it will all have been worth it. “I can’t help it.”

“S’all right,” Taako says, and then wriggles a hand free of her hold to pat her a little condescendingly, a little comfortingly on her head. “Someone’s gotta watch your six.”

#

Taako has a few regrets in life. Not telling his aunt he loved her before she died. Getting caught stealing cigarettes and losing his cushy grocery job, couple of years back. Being a little _too_ good at shooting and getting tapped for special training during basic. Right now, he mostly regrets telling Lup that he'd watch her back, because that's led to his current situation.

It's _raining_ — cold sleet falling like a thousand pinpricks against his exposed skin and soaking his coat and pants and _underwear_ — and he's stuck in a tree, staring at a Nazi — maybe Hunger — base, waiting for one of the assholes inside to come out on patrol. He's been here for _hours._ Since before dawn. He's going to be here until after dusk.

He sneezes. He hopes the rain lets up soon, but at least it's good cover. It's going to make any shots he needs to take harder, too, but that's no problem.

Taako is a _killer_ sniper. Pun entirely intended. He knows it surprised Lup, when she learned _long range sniping_ was what they’d tapped him for, was the thing he wasn't allowed to write home about.

"Don't they know you can't sit still?" she asked, when he told her, amusement dancing on her face.

"Shut up! I'm real good at this crap," he’d said, and she’d nodded and said, "I trust you." What was he supposed to do with that except show her his chops on the shooting range back at camp? He’d shot a whole _clip_ of bullseyes, which was kind of a waste of ammunition. Lup's in good with Hallwinter, Taako figures he can waste some lead.

He’d turned to Lup after, and she’d looked impressed. She’d walked up to him, clapped a hand on his shoulder, and said, "Shit, T."

"Told you," Taako said, all smug, and he’d stood there for a moment, letting the stillness evaporate off his skin, until he felt like himself again.

That was two weeks ago, give or take. They've been out here, in the cold, miserable weather, scoping out the suspected Hunger base, for four days. It's Lup's first mission — not counting the backdating of her dramatic prisoner rescue. A trial run. Can't fuck it up. So Taako's lying on a tree branch with his rifle, waiting for a good moment to strike, to sow the seeds of panic in the assholes working for the Hunger, or — if he can’t get a good shot — a decent approximation of their guard schedule.

It's boring work. Taako gets why Lup was surprised by his aptitude for it. He’s either _entertained_ or he’s looking for his next entertainment. But shooting suits him. There's a trick to it. A sort of floating focus. You send your mind two layers above your body and you can stay there _forever_. Then you breathe in, and you exhale, and you pull the trigger.

Still nice when things happen though — a new guard replaces the old one. Taako watches him through his scope. This guy looks… young. Younger than Taako. Probably can't even grow a beard. Taako snorts softly. Guess the Nazis are doing the same shit that the Americans are — recruiting everyone they can and letting anyone who wants to take a crack at serving their country. And drafting those who don’t.

Taako watches the kid on his lone patrol and lets his mind hover up above everything else in the relative silence of the dreary late-November evening. It’s kinda peaceful. Kinda zen. The patter of the rain on leaves around him would be soothing if he wasn’t up a tree staring down the scope of a sniper rifle.

And then things go wrong, and it's not even Taako's fault.

That’s the annoying part. It's a _squirrel_ — fattened up for the winter and jumping onto a too-thin branch which snaps with a sharp _crack_ — a sound that echoes through the otherwise silent tableau and draws the kid's gaze straight to Taako, to the glint of his scope in the trees.

The kid yelps, draws his gun, and _Jesus_ that thing looks like nothing Taako's ever seen — all sleek lines like something from the Hallwinter Expo. The kid might be a _kid,_ but he's still armed, and armed with something _weird._

The kid shoots. The kid gets lucky.

The bullet rips through the meat of Taako's left thigh like a hot coal, prompting Taako's arms to lock up, and Taako's eyes to water — pushes a curse from his mouth. By the grace of drilled-in instinct, he pulls the trigger and in an instant, he's killed the kid. He sees the small “O” that the kid's mouth makes, the bulging eyes, the quiet slump of his body falling over, and then he's not paying any attention to the kid anymore because his leg feels like it's on _fire_.

Taako tries to move it and it sends involuntary tears down his cheeks, so _that's_ out of the question. He tries to twist around to look at his leg, and that's more successful. The wound isn't as bad as he had thought — there's a deep red line down his thigh where the cloth is ripped away, but it's a graze, just cutting through skin and muscle, he thinks. Though if it’s nicked an artery then he's really fucked.

Taako twists back to look at the Hunger base. No one’s come to relieve the kid. They're not going to find his body for ages, probably. Nobody’s coming for the Hitler Youth. He laughs a little at his own joke. He’s maybe going into shock? Going into shock would be bad.

It's just a graze, though. He's fine. Taako's _good._ Nothing to be fuckin’ shocked about here.

He should probably do something about the bleeding.

Taako grimaces, steeling himself and shifting his gun, making sure it’s secure in the little nest he’s made for himself before letting go. "Fuck," he says quietly, and then: "Arghhh, Jesus _fuck,"_ as he maneuvers himself into a sitting position, tears streaming silently down his face because _motherfucker._

It's not as bad as the Hunger experiments, but it's still pretty bad. Still burns like someone dragged a red-hot poker down his thigh. He wriggles out of his jacket. Too bad it's going to get all bloody, he liked this one.

He presses the fabric against the wound and bites down hard on his bottom lip to stifle a cry. His entire thigh is red. Some of the branch is red. He's not sure how much wounds are supposed to bleed, but maybe this is normal. The jacket does a pretty alright job of soaking up the blood.

Taako _really_ hopes this works. He wonders if he should try and head back to base. But either it's a graze and it'll stop bleeding soon, or it hit an artery and he'll bleed out before he even gets down the tree. So he'll stay, and hope the bullet went through muscle and nothing else.

He presses a little harder. Chokes down a sob. Fuck. He's gotta be quiet.

The evening creeps onward. Taako reaches for the focus he keeps when he’s sniping and spends most of the day in a bit of a hazy fugue. He fails to die. The rain keeps falling and nobody comes to relieve the dead guard — the only spot of luck on this miserable fucking mission.

Taako stares at the kid’s corpse through his scope. They keep each other company, Taako light-headed from pain and blood loss, feeling morbid as he looks at this kid who could’ve been him, could be Lup if Taako doesn’t stick around to watch out for her. And night finally comes.

Slowly, painstakingly, Taako climbs down the tree, his rifle slung across his back. His leg hurts a lot less, now. He wouldn’t have been able to move this much a few hours ago. Maybe thanks to the serum. It's too dark for him to tell whether it's healed, but he can move if he goes slow and he doesn't want to risk poking the wound and setting a fresh round of pain off again.

By the time he returns to camp, Taako's barely limping at all, though he's _real_ fucking dizzy — camp being a few miles from the Hunger base. It's still drizzling and he's shrugged his jacket back on to guard against the chill. It’s ineffective as fuck because he's already completely soaked and his jacket is wet too, from rain and blood. He wants a hot bath. Ha, and a flying car, too.

The smallest of fires is burning, set up with a bit of oilcloth over it to keep the water from putting it out and to shield it from enemy aircraft. It's down to the embers. A smattering of half-shelters constructed in a ring around the fire, one the larger than the others because him and Lup stuck two sad little oil cloth tents together to make one full-size.

Troth is on guard duty, sitting with her rain jacket securely zipped, the only concession she's making to the weather. She's a trooper. He doesn't think he's ever heard her complain, and when he approaches she nods at him.

"Learn anything interesting?" she asks in her crisp, quiet voice.

"Had to kill a kraut," he says, and doesn't mention the bullet graze. It's dark enough that she can't distinguish blood-wet from water-wet. "Lup around?"

"In your tent," she says. "Good work. You're soaked."

"Yeah, least the rain gave me some cover," he says. He waves at Troth and does his best to walk in a straight line to his tent, which is hard, because everything is wavering.

#

Lup’s squinting down at some maps of the local terrain in the dim light of her lamp when Taako staggers in looking like drowned death.

"Jesus fuck!" she says, dropping her papers at the sight of him. He grins, but he looks really pale. It reminds her unsettlingly of when she hauled him out of the lab. "Christ, T, are you alright?"

Lup stands, and starts rummaging in her pack for her towel. He sits heavily on the ground. "Just got a little bit shot at, is all. S'all good, cha'boy shot him back. They might know we're here now, maybe. Sorry. Think I got the guard schedule though. Place is pretty deserted."

There's a lot for her to unpack there, but first: "You got _shot?"_ She whirls back around to give him a long, panicked look over. He mostly looks tired, drawn, extremely wet. She'd expected the wet — it's been raining all day — but _shot?_

"M'fine," he says. "Just my leg."

"And you walked back on it?"

"It was just a graze! What else was I supposed to do?"

He has a point, Lup guesses. Taako looks annoyed, pulling stuff out of his pack to find some dry clothing. "You're right," she says, turning back to her stuff so he won't see the worried expression on her face. She knows he's been through worse. She's seen the aftermath of it. But it feels different that his time as a POW. She sent him out today. He got hurt and it's partially because of her.

A bullet to the leg. A graze. If it had been a few inches to the right, he could have _died._

She pulls out a towel and her first aid pouch. "At least lemme patch you up, alright?"

"Ain't gonna say no to _Captain America,"_ he says, but obligingly peels his wet pants off. His left thigh isn't exactly a bloody mess, but it sure is a bloody something. "It looks worse than it is. I think the serum kicked in."

"You're Captain America too, dingus," she says, “Thank god for the serum.” She passes him the towel for his hair before digging out a spare shirt to wipe the blood off his skin. Her hands are maybe a little shaky. It's the most blood she's seen on Taako at once. At the POW camp he was punctured and bruised, but not bloody. The wound looks clean, at least. Further in the healing process than she would have expected. More proof that he's got a similar serum variant to hers. The Hunger scientist who experimented on him must have worked with Dr. Andrews before — must have been partially responsible for the thing that consumed Red Skull.

"Hey. I'm fine. Cha'boy's alright," he says, and he's using his _nice_ voice, the one he uses when he's _trying_ not to be an asshat — the one he used when he was holding a handkerchief to her bloody nose after all the fights she got in when they were kids, the one he used after she broke up with her last girlfriend. She scowls.

"I know, T," she says. "I just — I dunno. I sent you out there, and you got _shot._ This was — this was supposed to be fucking _reconnaissance."_

"Shit happens," he says, wincing when she pulls a little at the ragged edge of his wound. "It's fine. It's just bad cause I lost a buncha blood. I think it didn't clot for a while ‘cause of the rain."

She doesn't say anything. Focuses on cleaning everything up. She'll bandage the graze and it'll be gone in a week, if Taako's lucky. Assuming the serum works the same for him. It's not a large wound. But it could have been. If it had hit an artery... if he had bled out, she never would have known even though she was only three miles away.

"I shouldn't have asked you to stay," Lup says. "I should have gotten you a discharge or something. A cushy desk job with ops in London or some shit. You'd have been good at that."

He kicks her with his good leg.

"Don't be an idiot. I know you might not have noticed," he says, puffing his chest out, looking all indignant. "Cause you're real _unobservant_ and all that. But, me, _hi,_ I'm Captain America, hello, I'm _hella_ good at what I do. Shit's gonna be _fine._ I'm gonna be _fine,_ Lulu _._ You're not getting rid of me _that_ easy."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed this chapter, please leave a comment and kudos! <3
> 
> Come say hello to us on tumblr where we're [anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Updates wrong Thursdays with a special bonus chapter going up August 23rd to celebrate us finally being able to post this big boi! For more information about this fic we've spend the past four months writing, check out [our liner notes](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com/post/177063999932/liner-notes-all-the-things-you-prayed-for).


	2. America's Bravest Soldier: Now in Technicolor!

"Ow — quit _pulling_ ," Lup says, jerking forward as the brush tugs through her hair.

"Lemme _fix_ it. I'm _helping,"_ Taako says, yanking her back. The mess hall is maybe not the best place to attack the rat’s nest on top of Lup’s head, but they’re on a schedule and this way Lup can theoretically eat while Taako gets her presentable. So far she’s mostly used her mouth to complain, not to eat the porridge in front of her or drink any of the coffee Sildar fetched for them both. "You asked for this, dingus."

"I didn't know you were gonna _scalp me,"_ Lup says, but stops wriggling and submits to Taako's rough treatment.

He frowns at the knots in her hair. "What the fuck did you do to this," he asks, putting down the brush and leaning in to pick at a large tangle with his fingers.

"We're in the middle of a _war,"_ Lup says. "I haven't had time to _brush my hair."_

 _"I_ have," Taako says. His own hair is in a stubby ponytail. He's cut off the ragged ends. It's shorter than he likes it, but it's clean and untangled. He's really come to appreciate clean hair these days.

"You're an outlier," Lup says. "A weird, well-groomed, outlier."

Taako scowls at the back of Lup's neck without any real anger. "Can't believe they made _you_ a showgirl."

Lup elbows him, which prompts Taako to let go of her hair and flick the back of her head in retaliation. Lup twists around to face him, and things devolve rapidly into a slap fight. Lup's hair is still a messy patch of thatch sticking up on her head.

"You two are a real riot," Sildar says, watching them from across the table, idly stirring his coffee. "Why don't you just cut it off?"

Twin looks of horror. Sildar laughs. "Okay, so maybe not."

Taako sticks his tongue out. "How'd you like if it we cut _your_ hair."

Sildar shrugs, takes a sip of his drink. "No problem. Easier to take care of."

"I'm surrounded by philistines," Taako says, and pulls at Lup's hair experimentally. It really is a mess. He can't fault her for not brushing her hair in the middle of this whole stupid war, though, much as he likes giving her shit for things. But they've been back at base for three whole days. Some guys are coming to shoot some film footage today. Lup’s the star of the show. They gotta be _presentable_. "You know, maybe we _should_ cut it off."

"It wouldn't match yours, then," Lup points out.

Taako frowns. "Cut mine too, I guess." It's not a twin thing. They didn't have the same hair back home — Taako's was always longer than Lup's was. They didn't dress similarly either. It's _annoying_ getting mistaken for your sister all the time, except for when you want to be mistaken for your sister. But Captain America has to be consistent, no matter who's wearing the suit.

Lup turns to him. "Aw, I'm not gonna make you do that. We'll just have the guys shoot from the front."

"You could always wear the cowl," Sildar suggests.

Lup wrinkles her nose. "And hide my beautiful face? Absolutely not." She looks over at the clock hanging at the far end of the mess hall. "Shit, we better get going. Sil, you coming?"

She stands, and Taako follows her. Sildar remains seated, the remnants of their lunch — plates, mugs, napkins — spread out in front of him. He takes a sip of his coffee and shakes his head. "Nope. Not good for my image."

"What, _patriotism_ isn't good for your image?" Taako says, mock-serious. He gets why Sil wouldn't want to come. He's not sure he wants to be in the propaganda reels either — Taako's always talking about Hollywood, and it's half a joke even in his own brain, but if he's going to be on the big screen, he's always wanted it to be on his own terms.

"It makes me look like a showman," Sildar explains, matching Taako's tone. "I'm an engineer. A _businessman."_

"Oh, and what am I, then?" Lup says, stacking plates and handing them to Taako to take to cleanup.

"Captain America," Sildar says. There's an odd moment of tension after he says that. A brief flash of frustration flits across Lup's face. Sildar looks immediately chagrined, and papers the expression over as quick as it comes.

"Excuse me," Taako says, _“I'm_ Captain America."

Lup and Sildar both laugh. Taako grins, and shoves the dirty plates back into Lup’s hands before sprinting away.

#

The film crew is setting up against a quiet little wooded area a couple-hundred yards away from the commissary. Davenport briefed them on the importance of propaganda and their role in it the night before, his heart clearly not in it when he told them to "behave, please."

Taako's only a little annoyed about the whole affair. Technically he doesn't have to be here, but he kinda likes the idea of seeing how stuff gets shot. And Lup's gotta be here, so he might as well tag along.

War sucks. You're either fighting, or you're bored. Neither of these things is particularly appealing to him.

Taako ambles up to the guys, who perk up at first, thinking he's Lup, and deflate when they realize he's not. Taako pretends not to notice. Other things that are bad about being in the army: people keep calling him Lup. That's uniforms for you, he guesses. He waves at them. They wave back, and the one unpacking a suitcase comes running over.

"Taako, right?" he says.

"The one and only," Taako replies. "Lup's on her way." He figures he'll head off the obvious question.

"Any of the other Howlies coming?"

Taako shrugs. "Dunno. I could go round 'em up. Might take a hot sec."

The guy shakes his head. "No, we can grab them later. I don't want to lose the light. We'll just shoot the two of you for now."

"Cool," Taako says, and the guy goes back to his unpacking. Taako wonders if he ought to ask if they need help, but he doesn't really want to. He sits on a tuft of grass instead, close enough that he can hear the film crew chatter. It's more interesting to watch them unpack and assemble the cameras. It's also much less glamorous than he always thought making movies would be.

"So what do you want us to do?" he asks.

The guy he talked to earlier pauses. "Uh," he says. "Hero stuff?"

"Hero stuff," Taako says flatly.

The guy shrugs. "I don't know, just intro things? We weren't going to script it. The War Information guys said they wanted something that looked _natural,"_ the guy explains. "Just, you know, something friendly. This is for the folks back home. Get 'em to buy bonds, that sort of thing."

The folks back home. The kids and the 4-F'ed, the civvies, the women working in the plane factories, the men maintaining the propaganda machine, and all the stupid people who’ll read the Captain America comics, who think that war is just a day's work and then over.

Taako really, really wishes he was one of them.

"Yeah, alright," he says. "We can do friendly."

The guy smiles at him. "Thanks — we really appreciate it."

"Hey, better afternoon than getting shot at," Taako says, and the guy laughs like its a joke.

#

**TRANSCRIPT:**

EXT. ALLIED CAMP -- DAY

CAPTAIN AMERICA and SGT. TAACO are standing backdropped against a forest. In the distance, soldiers and the rest of the military camp can be seen.

CAPTAIN AMERICA  
Wait, so what did you want us to do again, just whatever?

[Pause.]

SGT. TAACO  
Act like we like each other?

CAPTAIN AMERICA **  
** Absolutely not —

Captain America shoves her brother nearly off camera. Sgt. Taaco is laughing.

SGT. TAACO  
Stop it! Stop pushing me!

Both of them look offscreen.

CAPTAIN AMERICA  
Sorry, sorry!

SGT. TAACO  
She's not sorry!

Captain America pulls Sgt. Taaco back to the center of the screen.

CAPTAIN AMERICA  
Okay, so what should I say?

SGT. TAACO  
Say something about, uh, fuckin' America. Point at the camera! Point at the camera and say you love America.

Captain America points at the camera, smiling.

CAPTAIN AMERICA  
I _love_ America.

Sgt. Taaco doubles over laughing.

#

They get into a routine. Captain America and her Howling Commandos are a media sensation. Captain America is a scourge on the Nazis and the Hunger and leaves a trail of explosions in her wake. Captain America is single handedly winning the war. If this keeps up, everyone will be home by Christmas.

(On the other side of the Axis-Allied border: who the _hell_ keeps sneaking into our bases? Assassinating generals? The enlisted swear that it was Captain America, sir. But that's nonsense, Captain America has no sense of subtlety — and besides, Cap was spotted last week in occupied France, not in _Germany.)_

Meanwhile, Lup argues with men twice her age in smoky conference rooms, leads strike teams on factories and hidden bunkers, learns far more about pain and the dealing of it that she ever wanted to know. Nobody tells you it’s all kids in the war.

Meanwhile, Taako stops counting kills. After a certain point the number stops mattering.

#

"Do we have to go?" Taako asks. "It's cold and I'm cold."  
  
Lup rolls her eyes. It's idle complaining, the sort of white noise Lup tunes out most of the time. If he was really upset, he’d have an actual, coherent argument or his voice would go all vicious. Instead, Taako’s sitting on her bedroll, shoving a second pair of socks on his feet, so he's fine.  
  
"Yeah, we gotta go," she says, adjusting the straps of her helmet. "Aufsteigend's on that train and we're not gonna get a better chance to nab that sonuvabitch."  
  
"How 'bout we blow up the train?" he suggests. "Or I could shoot him. Also why’re we still usin’ his last name? It’s hard as fuck, just call him _John."_

John Aufsteigend is the second-in-command of the Hunger, the Nazi “weird science” division — the one the Howling Commandos are tasked with taking down. The tech that comes out of their factories is like something outta the comic books. Energy weapons. Red Skull’s supernatural strength and disfiguration. Taako’s own enhancements.

John himself seems perfectly ordinary. Taako has privately told Lup that he was in charge of the Azzano facility. That Red Skull might be Hitler’s liaison, but John is the one overseeing operations. “Was he the one experimenting on y — the prisoners?” Lup asked, after the briefing.

Taako grimaced and changed the subject and that was an answer in and of itself.  
  
"Shoot him while he’s in a moving train? On a mountain?"  
  
"Yeah," Taako says, unruffled. "I could do it."  
  
She's not sure if he's kidding. He's made some impossible shots, and she's heard people around camp — around _command_ — talking about him. Taako's becoming something of a informal legend in the army. She's noticed him smiling when he overhears the gossip — Cap’s brother could shoot a feather in a snowstorm, can calculate trajectory and wind speed in a split second, can spot enemies in the treeline nobody else can see.

Lup isn't sure whether she's glad of the rumors or not. On one hand, she likes that he's getting the recognition he deserves. On the other, her experience being Cap has given her a healthy appreciation for _not sticking out_ in the army. She knows that after the war, they won’t let her go back to Brooklyn without a fight. And if they want Taako to stick around too... Well. Thoughts for after the war.

Lup doesn't think about after-the-war that much. Everyone else talks about it. Marrying their girl back home. Their boy. Opening that restaurant, shop, bar, garage. Going west, going back to their childhood town, going to college. They talk about their mothers and fathers and siblings and friends. Everyone has _plans._ When asked, she laughs and says she's taking Taako and going back to Brooklyn, and then Taako butts in with "New York? Please. We're goin' west. I wanna see _Hollywood_ ," which usually turns into a discussion about films and movie stars and cuts off talk of _after_.  
  
"Sure you could, babe," Lup says, zipping her jacket up. "But Cap'nport wants him alive, because, you know, info."  
  
Taako wrinkles his nose. "Gross. Alive."  
  
"Oh c'mon, it'll be fun," Lup cajoles. "We'll zipline in. You'll like it." She holds out a hand to help him up.  
  
"It's gonna be _cold_ ," Taako says again. He takes her hand and lets her pull him up.

#

The drop point is a cliff overlooking a train track snaking through the Alps — a dark line bisecting fresh-fallen snow. Poor visibility. The zipline is actually one of a number of thick telephone wires that eventually connects to the station, seventeen miles away. Using the wire and reinforced strips of leather provided by Sildar to zipline onto the train when it passes on the tracks far below them is a risky maneuver, but if — _when —_ it works, they’ll take John by surprise. Nobody's could see this coming. John isn't expecting an attack in transit — not here, and not in this weather. Nobody sane would try.

But Lup’s Captain America and she’s backed by her Howling Commandos.

Taako stands at the edge of the cliff, still and watchful. He has the best eyesight out of all of them. That’s not a rumor. It still sometimes surprises Lup that Taako can be so quietly alert. She's used to Taako having two modes: a blur of manic, distracted motion, or draped over the couch.

"Train's here," he says, and it’s a moment more before Lup can see it cutting through the snow swirling around them — a distant black blur. "Time to go, Cap."

She glances at Sloane, the other Commando on the op with them. "Right, let's roll."

Sloane gives her a thumbs up. Lup looks back at Taako, about to swing his strap over the zipline, and hastily puts a hand on his shoulder to stop him from moving.

"I'm taking point." He gives her a disgruntled look. _"Taako."_

"Fine, but I'm second," he says. He doesn't say anything about watching her back, but she knows that's what he means.

"Aw, you _care,"_ she teases, and swings her strap over the insulated wire. Lup jumps, then she's zooming through the falling snow, the cold of it pricking her cheeks, and she's smiling, biting back the whoop of joy, the burn of adrenaline and a feeling deep in her bones that they’re gonna _get_ John, because this — this is _great,_ and between all the shit and gore and bloodshed, there are times like this.

She lands heavily on the roof of the train, and then she's ducking out of the way as Taako slams down next to her followed by Sloane.

They're on the move immediately. Snow pelts them from all sides as they scramble down to an open-topped car loaded with lumber and strangely shaped metal, the sound of the train moving muffled by the weather.

Still, they try to be quiet.

"I got this," Taako says, elbowing Lup and Sloane out of the way to bend down next to the locked door of the next car. He yanks off his gloves and shoves them in a pocket, pulling out a set of picks. He jimmies them into the lock, rummaging around inside it until there’s a soft click. He stands, smiling smugly. "Ladies first."

"Show-off," Sloane says, giving him a light shove. Lup glances at Taako. "We sure he's in the back?"

"Nope," Taako says, popping the p jauntily. "But s'our best guess, right? Me and Cap'nport were goin' over the intel last night, and John's gonna be where the equipment is, well, er, probs. Knowin' the guy." Taako is the only one who’s ever had a conversation with the man.

"Alright," Lup nods. "I trust you. Worst that happens is we gotta clear the other side of the train too."

"Such little _faith_ in your own _brother,"_ Taako says, and puts his hand on the doorknob. "We ready to roll?"

Lup steps forward, shield at the ready. "Let's light 'em up. I'm on point. Sloane, you're my second, T, you're at my six. And, _go!"_

Taako shoves the door open and Lup runs into the car, surprising the Hunger goons lounging around, expecting an easy day of transport. To their credit, they leap to their feet and draw firearms, yelling. One man scrambles to the intercom to sound the alarm, another draws on Lup, but neither is fast enough — two headshots from Taako take them both out and Sloane lunges forward, snaking around another woman to disarm her, kicking her in the chest and twisting her neck with an audible snap.

Lup sends her shield flying — shouting "Shield!" so her companions know to duck — and it goes whirling through the air, ricocheting around the room. It knocks out a woman holding a ridiculously large knife and slams into the stomach of another man, sending him to the floor, and by then, Lup's on top of him, punching his nose in with her reinforced gloves.

The car is quiet again a moment after their attack, their breathing the only sound in the room, labored from physical exertion.

"Shit, is that it?" Taako says, wiping a spray of blood off of his knuckles.

"Seven more cars," Sloane says.

"Easy as pie," Lup says.

Taako pokes her with the butt of his rifle. "You've never made pie in your life, Lulu. _I_ make pie."

 _"_ It’s _Cap_ — we're in the field," Lup says. "Easy as _eatin'_ your pie."

Sloane snorts. "C'mon, wonder twins. Pack up the slapstick. I wanna get back to camp _someday."_

Taako sticks his tongue out at her.

"I'm _Captain America,"_ Lup says, already moving toward the next door. "Show some respect."

"Respect my _ass_ ," Taako says, and Lup kicks the door down — no point fiddling with lockpicks when she can beat Taako to the door — and they're off.

Each train car has more Hunger scum in it, more personnel that go down real easy — none of them expect Captain America and her Howling Commandos to be on a _moving train_ in the Alps.

They've got procedure down to a science by the third car. First, Taako shoots the ones furthest away while they’re too surprised to react. Then, Sloane and Lup take down the Hunger goons stupid enough to think it'd be fun to tango with a supersoldier.

They’ve still got their fair share of scrapes by the end of it. Sloane goes down heavy in the last room, cursing loudly when the guy she's grappling with gets a lucky twist of her leg and takes her down with him even as she jams a dagger into his eyeball.

"Shit, you alright?" Lup runs over, blithely slamming her shield into the last Hunger soldier standing. He drops like a brick. Lup kneels beside Sloane and touches her leg gingerly, kicking the body out of the way.

Sloane winces and pulls her dagger out of the eye socket. "My ankle's fucked," she says bluntly. "Jesus, the bastard was heavy. Lucky shot, asshole." She rolls up her pant leg, and the joint is already a bruised, angry mess. Probably can't take any weight.

Taako whistles, walking over from the front of the car and slinging his rifle onto his back. He crouches down and pokes Sloane’s ankle gently. Sloane slaps his hand away. "Yeah, that's busted," he says. "Shit, in last room, too. Bad luck, homeslice."

Taako's bleeding from a shallow cut on his arm, but other than that, he's in pretty good shape. Better than Lup, whose ribs ache like they've maybe been cracked. She hopes they're just bruised — doesn't matter much either way, the serum will heal her up. Sloane's out of commission though. Can't fight if you can't walk — or at least Lup doesn't feel comfortable taking the woman into the last room on one leg.

Lup unbuckles a pouch on her belt and tosses Sloane the miniature radio Sildar gave her before the mission. "Check in with base, confirm our rendezvous point, alright, babe? Me and T will go grab Auf — John."

Sloane looks like she's going to protest, so Lup levels her with her best Captain America glare. "It’s one guy," she says. "Me and T can handle it."

"Don't tell me what to do," Taako says, and turns back to Sloane. "Me and Lulu can handle it."

Sloane laughs at that, which was probably Taako's intention going by the slight satisfaction in his expression. Lup rolls her eyes to complete the bit, reaching out to grab Taako by his rifle strap. "We got some Nazis to capture, dingus. Remember, no headshots."

"No headshots?" Taako complains, waving to Sloane with one hand and trying to dislodge Lup from his person with the other. "Cha'boy's a _sniper,_ goofus."

"Aim for the feet, we gotta bring him back _alive,"_ Lup stresses, letting Taako go so he can ready his weapon. "Door opening in three, two, one—"

She kicks the door in, and a bolt of blue energy zips past her head. Her supersoldier reflexes are the only thing that save her from getting blasted. The beam eats a hole in the side of the car, letting in a burst of frigid wind, snow blowing into the train. A muffled grunt as the man is shot in the arm, dropping his weapon. The gun fires again as it skitters across the floor — because of _course_ Hunger tech is that fucking volatile — eating a second hole in the wall, letting more air in.

The car is suddenly freezing, filled with the scream of the air rushing past outside the train as it hurtles through the Alps.

"Heads up, they got that weird shit!" Taako says, running forward to try and grab the energy gun off the floor as a Hunger goon dives for it too.

"Noticed, thanks!" Lup tosses her shield into the gut of the nearest soldier — also carrying an oversized energy gun. There are more men in the car with John than they’ve had to deal with so far. More men who are _much_ better armed. This is going to be harder than expected. The intel didn't say John would be armed with the Hunger’s experimental tech

"No one told me there would be the _weird_ shit!" Taako says, echoing her thoughts as he punches the man he’s grappling with in the head and scoops up the energy weapon. He places the butt of it on his shoulder. "Ooh, come to daddy. How the hell do you _work?"_ he trails off, one hand running along the barrel of the gun while he throws a knife at a guy running toward him.

"Really, Captain," John shouts, and that's how Lup places him — whipping her head to stare at John crouching in the furthest corner of the car, carrying an even larger gun than most of the goons. He strains to lift it. "How is this a surprise to you? And a pleasure to see you again, Sergeant."

"Not a surprise," Lup answers, ignoring the second part of John’s comment. "Just wanted us to be on an even playing field!"

She throws her shield. John intercepts it with a bolt of blue energy that sends it off course, banging off the wall so she has to leap to grab it after its ricochet. Fuck, Lup thinks, of course it wouldn't be that easy. But now she knows vibranium won't be eaten by the energy. She's got the only protection from the beams in the entire room. She grins at the thought, beginning to advance toward John, using the shield as, for once, a shield. John swears. He must not have had the opportunity to test on vibranium. Too rare.

The blue energy beams reflect off it and she barely feels their impact as she runs. They bounce off into the walls, the ceiling, and _Jesus,_ They’re doing some crazy structural damage to the place. The back of the car is almost more hole than wall at this point.

"Whenever you wanna jump in, T," she yells, trying to be heard over the wind, because she's got no idea what he's doing and he could be _helping._

"Got it!" Taako says, and a burst of blue energy comes from behind her and nails one of the goons in the chest. He sort of folds into thin air and disappears — the same effect the energy weapons they've seen in other encounters have .

"Come at us, assholes!" Taako says, laughing wildly and firing the purloined energy weapon in a semicircle around him. A few of the shots hit soldiers. Others just punch more holes in the walls.

"Watch where you point that!" Lup shouts at him. "No kill shots on John!"

"Oh, am I that valuable?" John says, and he doesn't sound at all scared, which _pisses Lup off._

She snarls, charging forward, because that's the only way she knows how to do anything — headfirst. John sneers, and flips a switch on his gun, hefting it on his shoulder.

"Fuckin' _hell,_ Lup," Taako swears, and runs after her, still taking potshots with his energy gun until it runs out of charge, ducking behind her so she can shield them both. He swings his rifle off his back and starts shooting again, taking out the last two guards with shots dead center between their eyes.

"What'd I say about headshots?" Lup asks, grunting as the shield takes another hit from John’s gun.

 _"They're_ not John," Taako says, darting out of the protection of the shield to shoot. It misses John's foot by a fraction of a hair. John jumps back, and finally she sees some fear on the creep's face — he pulls the trigger of his energy gun without even aiming, just pointing it vaguely in their direction, and Lup ducks behind her shield again.

John misses. The bolt of blue lightning hits the middle of the floorboards and Lup dives out of the way in one direction while Taako dodges in the other. But this time the energy doesn't disappear when it hits directly, doesn’t just blast a hole in the floor and dissipate — it creeps, chewing through the floor, exposing the tracks that pass rapidly underneath them, the train car rattling more and more frantically. It's more empty space than train at this point.

If Lup stepped back too far, she'd scrape against the side of the mountain. Taako is opposite her, stuck on the other side a the chasm in the floor, wind from the open space behind him whipping stray strands of hair back and forth. He steadies himself, rising back to his feet as John presses buttons on his gun, tries to do _something_ to the settings. He’s supposed to be smart. Maybe he realizes that eating away the entirety of the car they’re all in is a bad idea.

"Let's get this shit over with," Taako says, all cocky confidence as he lifts his rifle back to his shoulder in one smooth motion, leveling the barrel at John, and —

The train curves. It curves and the sudden jolt to the side makes Taako stumble and pull the trigger prematurely. The gun goes off, bullet hitting John in the calf, and he howls in pain as he falls back against the safety of his unharmed little corner of the car, but the recoil pushes Taako off-balance.

Taako steps back. There's nothing beneath his feet.

Taako falls.

He falls and Lup surges forward, scrambling around the hole in the floor to catch him, to try and grab his shoulder-arm-hand before he’s out of reach. She surges forwards and she has a perfect view of the way Taako's face registering nothing but shock. The way his form silhouettes against the white of the snowstorm howling around him, the way his hair floats in the air, the way he reaches for her and she reaches back and they're inches apart but even as Lup grasps for him he's falling back and down and the moment — the split second where she could have got him, could have _saved_ him — is over and he's nothing but a dark form against the white of the snow and she's screaming his name, _"Taako —"_

And he's gone.

#

The train reaches its station. Lup brings Sloane back to camp. John is with them, in handcuffs. Lup tells the brass what happened rotely. The serum enhanced her memory and mind as well as he body. She's still cold. She has the phantom memory of Taako's hand against hers. A few inches. She keeps looking over her shoulder for her brother. There are pauses in her language for a second opinion that never comes. The spaces are painfully loud.

Davenport and Sildar look at her with something like pity. She averts her gaze. Can’t meet their eyes. She finishes the debrief. Taako is listed as missing in action. Missing in action, but nobody could survive that fall. Dead. Taako, dead. She keeps thinking she hears his voice. That she turns a corner he’ll be there, waiting. Maybe the same madness that overtook Red Skull and twisted him into something dark and sinister is creeping up on her now. Her hands are shaking. She doesn't notice.

Lup walks out of the briefing. The Howling Commandos are waiting for her. They look exhausted, even if Troth and Hurley didn’t come on the op. She wonders if she looks as tired. Sloane is on crutches. Hurley claps her shoulder, pulls her into a hug.

“We're sorry for your loss, Cap," she says, and Lup scrubs her eyes with the back of her glove so they don't see her tears. She's not crying, anyway. The selfish part of her is angry. How _dare_ Taako die? How dare he leave her alone?

There's no one in the world who knows her now.

"Yeah. Thanks," she says. Words are difficult. It feelslike she hasn’t left the mountain and the train, like she's never going to leave. Like when Taako fell she did as well. "I should have caught him."

"It was an accident," Sloane says, and Lup now knows they were eavesdropping on the meeting.

"I'm the reason he was fucking here," Lup says, and the alarm on their faces make her realize she’s shouting. "Fuck. I'm sorry. I shouldn't —"

She shrugs away their well meaning embraces. "I'm gonna... just..." she trails off — _walks_ off — running away because she's a coward at heart, isn't she? Can't face the fucking empathy. Can't deal with the world without her brother. Like she's a kid or something. And anyway, what's the fucking _point_ if he's not here?

She ends up sitting on a rock outside of camp, nursing a bottle of whisky. She can't stand the thought of going back to her and Taako’s tent, his clothes mixed with hers, his bedroll untidy, unmade. As if he’ll walk in at any moment and sit down next to her, make fun of Cap’nport, of Sildar, complain about the food — she can't do that. She's going to requisition new quarters. She's Captain America. She can do that.

It’s not fair. Taako survived the draft, the front lines, the Hunger prison camp. He was supposed to survive the war. He was supposed to go home safe. It's Lup's fault that he was out here instead of back in Brooklyn — instead of in London with a cushy desk job.

He fell off a fucking _train,_ Lup thinks, and she wants to laugh; she wants to cry.

She takes another sip of whiskey instead. It's nicer than any of the stuff she drank back home. Taako would say it's being wasted on her.

She doesn't feel the least bit drunk. She's had half the bottle.

How much would it take? Not even just about the liquor. How much will she have to give up? Sometimes the war feels like a punishment crafted specifically for her. She knows that thought is sacrilege. It's all ego. She should know better than to buy into the Captain America mythos. Taako would mock her.

She closes her eyes. She wishes for — for time to rewind. For one last miracle. For an ounce more strength, a split second longer to have caught him. For Taako to come swaggering up to her, unharmed, rifle set jauntily across his back, smirk on his face like _Hey, did ya think I was dead? Don't be an idiot, Lulu._

Footsteps. She opens her eyes and for a second her heart is filled with pure, dumb hope.

"Hey, Cap," says Sildar.

"Hey." Lup slumps back down. She doesn't want to talk to Sildar right now. He's got all the tact of a cherry bomb.

Sildar sits down next to her, looking as tired as she feels. He pulls out his own flask. "I'm sorry about Taako," he says, the same stupid fucking sentiment that everyone has been giving her. Yeah, no shit they're sorry about Taako. What the fuck is being sorry gonna do about it? He's _dead_. She's sorry. Everyone's sorry. He's _still_ dead.

Sildar grimaces after he says it, like he knows how inadequate it is.

"There's a war on," Lup says, pulling out her best Captain America voice, flattening her accent, pitching it _patriotic._ "Thanks."

He shoots her a look. Takes a long pull from his flask and looks away. "He was a good man. A good soldier. Isn't that what you're supposed to say when someone dies?" Sildar doesn't seem like he's looking for an answer.

"He wasn't," Lup says, and she hates the way her voice is all blunt misery and longing. "He was a dick, and selfish, and annoying, and he was a shitty soldier, and, and he never _listened_! He was so fucking self-assured. Like he thought he was always right, and fuck, I — I want him _back."_

Her voice cracks and Lup looks down at the bottle of whiskey in her hands. This isn't how Captain America should act and she can't stand to be Lup right now — the last, sorry half of Lup-and-Taako. So she has to be Cap.

"I want this fucking liquor to _do_ something," she says. "Fucking, serum. What good is it?"

Sildar puts a tentative hand on her shoulder. "I bet I could engineer super-alcohol."

Lup laughs and laughs and somewhere in the middle of laughing, she begins to sob — gets her gloves and Sildar's shirt gross with tears and mucus. Sildar is a good sport about it, patting her gingerly on the back.

Taako continues to be dead, his corpse somewhere in between the high peaks of the Alps.

#

The war goes on and Captain America smiles for the boys and girls back home and Lup doesn't talk about Taako. She doesn't try to get drunk again, after that first night. The Howling Commandos take mission after mission — made more difficult without a sniper, but there’s no replacing the one they lost. So they compensate.

There's a war on. People die.

Lup asks for new quarters. She gets them. They're dreadfully empty without Taako's junk all over the place — how did he even accumulate _junk?_ This is the _army._ She doesn't think about that either.

Captain America loves nothing but her country. It's easier to think about the next op, the next fight, the next drop point, rather than thinking about the way she keeps almost asking where her brother is before remembering that Taako's not off fleecing cigs and candy, or getting contraband liquor from god-knows-where, or new boots for her because hers are worn through the heel.

He's dead. She keeps saying it to herself, as if repetition will make it stick, because it still seems ridiculous that _Taako_ could die.

She feels so stupid. Of course he could. It's a _war._ But she’d thought that as long as she was with him, they'd be okay. Bad things only happened when they split up — that'd been the case their entire life. Lup doesn't know how to exist without him, which is the _dumbest_ fucking thing. It's trite and sentimental and stupid, but she always had a second pair of eyes looking out for her. She's used to having someone else to orbit around.

Lup doesn't tell anybody how she feels. There's a war on. She concentrates on that like a mantra. Captain America's sole priority needs to be winning — there's no room for _Lup_ anymore. Only: Red Skull, the Hunger, the Tesseract.

So when John finally fesses up about the energy bombs, loaded onto a plane powered by the Tesseract, faster than anything the Allies have in their fleet, smiling all smug across the table because he believes it’s too late for the Allies to intercept Red Skull's plane, she's up and running. She's screaming at Sildar to _get your plane ready, babe._

Sure, there's not enough time for a platoon of men to get there, but one woman? One without any qualms about dropping in without a parachute? Yeah, there's time.

Taako would call her reckless. Taako's not around. And there's a _fuck_ -ton of Tesseract-powered missiles aimed at America and that's a _lotta_ people who could die. That’s the kinda strike that could single handedly win the war for the Axis.

Her actions are justified, Lup thinks, when Sildar drops her at the base, as she runs after Red Skull's plane, barely making it up the ramp before it takes off. She's the only one who could do this.

Lup gets to her feet and then she's scrambling up the ladder to the control room, intent on ending this, intent on winning. She’s got her shield across her arm and this single goal to stop a plane headed across the Atlantic to wipe America off the map.

Red Skull takes a potshot at her and she ducks back down. Throws her shield across the ship, angled so that it knocks his gun away. The shield bangs against the control panel and boomerangs back to her as she finishes the climb onto the bridge where he’s waiting.

"Give it up," she says. "Either you die here, you Nazi fuck, and I put the plane down, or you put the plane down and we both live."

He sneers at her, which is horrifying to see on his red, skeletal visage — made doubly strange in the weird blue light given off by the cube powering the console.

"Or I kill you," he says, and lunges — but not for her, for the _Tesseract._ She leaps forward too, intercepting him before he can reach it, and then they're brawling on the floor. It's the first time in a long time that Lup has fought with someone as strong as she is, and she reverts back to the way she fought when she was a kid — more misdirection than brute force.

"What's so special about the cube anyway?" she grunts out, trying to break Red Skull's hold on her.

He laughs. "What _isn't,_ Captain?" She lands a hit against his jaw and he reels back, but continues to speak. "Control over reality itself!"

He lets her go so he can try to dart around her, but she trips him, comes down hard on top of his torso, pushing her pointy elbows into his soft bits.

Red Skull snarls, pushing her away and scrambling back to his feet, Lup still right on his heels.

"Could even bring your beloved brother back," he says, and that makes Lup hesitate for the briefest moment. Just enough time for Red Skull to wrap his hands around the Tesseract.

He stands there for a moment, illuminated by its blue glow. It washes the color out of him. He looks almost reverent. And then — something about the set of his face changes, turns toward naked horror, and Lup is reaching for the cube, attempting to grab it out of his hands, when reality... _bends._

Red Skull folds out of existence before Lup can move. Like paper crumpling, like a light burning out. The cube drops to the floor. She blinks. Looks down. Watches as the Tesseract starts eating away at the metal it’s touching, dropping through the flooring. "Okay,” she says, to the empty ship. “So I'm not touching that."

Lup turns to the control panel. This is… foreign to her. She knows how to fly planes _in general,_ but she doesn't know how to fly _this_ plane. The panels are starting to blink and screech now that their power source has been unplugged. She has to put the Tesseract back. Maybe if she keeps her gloves on when she touches it?

Lup decides to see if she can even change course, first. She tugs at the control wheel and it moves up and down, but there's no rotation to it. She presses some buttons. Pulls a lever. Nothing changes. A flashing panel reads LANDING SEQUENCE DISABLED. It must be on a preprogrammed course. Red Skull wasn't a pilot, but he was the kind of madman who’d want to watch the bombs drop. John is the type of man who would enable him.

Lup can’t change course, but she still has to keep the missiles from dropping.

She looks out the windshield. The expanse of sky and sea below her. She wonders where she is now. Somewhere over the Atlantic — maybe Arctic — ocean. The GPS is fried and she's not sure if its because she dinged it with her shield or because the Tesseract was removed. She pushes down on the control wheel experimentally. The plane dips in altitude. She can… work with that.

Lup reaches for the radio embedded in the other console and turns the dial. Static fizzles, and Lup keeps twisting the knob until she finds the right frequency.

"Hello?” she says. “This thing working?"

"Cap?" It's Sildar, sounding incredulous. "Where the fuck are you? You okay? What happened to the plane?"

"Well, so I'm kinda on it. Red Skull is, uh — well, he kinda got himself vaporized, which I wish I could take credit for, but it was the Tesseract that did it, and I can't land this plane. I don’t know how to stop the bombs from dropping either."

"Oh, well, okay, fuck," he says. "Can you —"

"Sil, I'm gonna put it in the water." It comes to her without much thought. It feels right as soon as she says it out loud. She's going to drop the plane in the water where the bombs and the Tesseract and the last living piece of the supersoldier serum can't ever hurt anyone ever again. "Gonna drop it down before we reach land."

"Lup, you're _on_ the plane," Sildar says.

She laughs, and there's no humor in it. "Yeah babe, I noticed."

 _"Lup,"_ he says, and it’s all pathos.

Lup sighs. "Listen. Babe. It's either me, or it's all of New York, DC, probably Chicago... I saw a buncha bombs with a _lotta_ city names on it. I'm not that selfish."

He's silent for a moment. "Good luck, Cap," he says, finally. "Fuck, I wish I could tell you not to — hey, can you gimme your coords? We could try and pick you up?" His voice brightens.

Lup shakes her head though there’s no one there to see it. "My GPS is fried. Hey, give my love to the Howlies and Dav, yeah? Tell 'em I'm gonna miss them, and like — you know, thanks. All that stuff. You too, Sil."

"Yeah," he says, and his voice sounds all stopped up. "Yeah, I will. Hey, you're taking my vibranium down with you. Don't think I didn’t notice. Jerk."

"Looks better on me than it ever did on you," Lup says, and she appreciates this — that Sil will have a normal conversation with her, give her some shit while she's getting ready to drop the plane into the ocean. Reminds her of —

"Hey Sil? I've gotta get off now. Radio's breakin' up. Not sure where I am, so I wanna do this fast."

"Alright, Lup," he says, voice uncharacteristically soft. "Good luck."

"Thanks," she says, just as quiet. "Just, you know, for everything."

She turns off the radio. She looks out the windshield. The blue stretching endless in front of her. So much clear sky, so much ocean. She never would have seen this back home. Home's gonna be fucked if she doesn't do this.

Home is a shitty apartment in Brooklyn and her brother sitting on the couch, listening to the radio.

It’s not really a choice, to plunge the plane into the ice. Lup presses the control wheel forward, down. The vertigo hits. She feels like she's floating, like she's falling, like she's flying. The rush of air. The ocean coming toward her. She closes her eyes.

She’s thinking about Taako again. He’d hate that she’s doing this. He’d call her reckless like he didn’t do plenty of dumb shit too. He’s gonna be pissed. He’s going to be _so mad_ at her whe —

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Preemptive apologies to the boy.
> 
> If you enjoyed this chapter, please leave a comment and kudos! <3
> 
> Come say hello to us on tumblr where we're [anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)!


	3. And On the Third Day

He wakes up, and it's cold and — 

He wakes up, and there is someone else touching him —

He wakes up, and he can't feel his fingers and he can't feel his hand and — 

He wakes up, and someone is talking to him and he can't understand and they're yelling and he's so confused and everything hurts and — 

He wakes up, and he's screaming for his sister, for his aunt, for Sildar, for Cap'nport. His name is Sergeant Taako Taaco, #459021; Sergeant Taako Taaco, #459021; Serge —

He doesn't wake up for a while after that. 


	4. Avengers Assemble!

**_New York, 2012_ **

The future has good sandwiches. That’s what Lup decides she can focus on right now. It’s either focus on piling shawarma, chopped vegetables, and sauce onto her pita, or focus on the fact that it’s 2012 — a date right out of a sci-fi paperback — and aliens just attacked New York.

And now she’s sitting in a half-demolished restaurant that says WORLD’S BEST SHAWA— on its broken sign.

The whole front of the restaurant is filled with rubble, broken tables, smashed chairs — there’s an _alien spaceship_ crashed right outside. The robot-suit clad billionaire who tossed her on top of it so she could stab its brain is sitting next to her, haphazardly constructing his sandwich, still wearing half his armor. She’s breaking bread with two superspies, an alien demigod, and a short old guy who introduced himself as the “Sorcerer Supreme, but don’t worry about it, Merle’s fine, kiddo.”

Lup has some questions about Lucretia’s team building decisions. It’s like the Director cherry-picked the weirdest possible roster of misfit superhumans and told them to play nice. Actually that pretty much _is_ what Lucretia did. Lup’s a super-soldier who crashed a plane into the Arctic after saving the world from a potential atomic winter and woke up in the future. Tell that to the Lup of five — _seventy-_ five — years ago, and she’d call you nuts.

Maybe Lup’s just a character in _Astounding Stories_. Maybe this is a dream and she fell asleep listening to the radio and Taako’s going to wake her up and scold her for wasting his battery. That would make so much more sense.

“You alright?” Hallwinter asks. Lup startles.

He’s watching her. The guy’s hair is all tousled and he looks tired, but he still manages to look a little embarrassed for making her jump. “Sorry, you’ve just been staring at your tomatoes for the past three minutes.”

“We didn’t have tomatoes in the forties,” Lup says, and puts more tomatoes on her shawarma.

One of the superspies — the woman with the bow and black-fletched arrows, who Lup personally saw shoot a _grappling hook_ at one of the weird little alien sleds and clamber onto in mid-air — laughs. The other spy — who Lucretia introduced as Reaper and who hasn’t yet volunteered a real person name — looks faintly concerned. It’s a surprising expression on his face, because in the brief time Lup’s known him, he’s confined his expressions to “vaguely murderous.” But arrow lady _was_ apparently brainwashed by aliens for a bit, and it looks like they’re close.

Lup’s not certain about the details. She woke up a week ago. Things have been moving kinda fast.

“Nobody told me Captain America was funny,” arrow lady says, grinning.

“They invented humor after I was frozen,” Lup says, and if it hurts to make a joke about it — all the dead friends, all the time she’s lost — at least the joke releases some of the tension in the room, makes everyone at the table relax more. Fighting aliens with people doesn’t mean you _know_ them. “Call me Lup.”

“Raven,” the woman says. “Or RQ, if you like. Tall, dark, and brooding next to me is Kravitz. I bet he didn’t tell you his name, did he?”

“I didn’t have _time,”_ Kravitz protests, suddenly looking all indignant, and aw, he’s a _dork._

“Part of being a person is introducing yourself, Krav,” RQ says faux-primly, and takes a huge bite of her shawarma.

“Is this a Midgard thing?” Magnus asks, around his own mouthful of food. “I’m Magnus, of Asgard.”

“We know, bud,” Merle says, goodnaturedly.

Magnus grins at him. “It’s _important.”_

They remind Lup of the Howling Commandos. It’s been a week. It’s been seventy years. If she closes her eyes, it’s just like being back, down to the ache in her muscles from a good fight. She could use a nap, but she’s just slept for nearly seven decades.

They _literally_ unfroze her last week. Thinking that is still strange to her, just like the rest of the future is strange. She woke up to the sound of a baseball game. Not a new game, one she remembers listening to _two years ago,_ because it had been a fuckin’ disaster for the Dodgers, and her girlfriend at the time was super worked up about the whole thing.

Things continued to be wrong. She opened her eyes and not a minute later a “nurse” in a starched-stiff uniform walked in and said politely, “Captain America? You’ve been out for quite a while.”

And Lup had smiled, a little hysteric, and said, “Yeah? Cool, cool, uh, where am I?” because the lady’s bra under her uniform had been the wrong shape and her makeup was the wrong colorand her hair was _down_ and they never had their hair down in the hospital. Even the pajamas Lup was wearing were weirdly cut and _oh shit she’d probably been captured by the Hunger._

“The hospital,” the “nurse” said, with a pretty-picture-wrong smile. “You’ve had quite the crash. I’ll send the doctor right in. Welcome back, Cap.”

Lup knew a lie when she heard one. They were trying to manage her. The army wouldn’t call her _Cap._

She flexed her toes, her fingers. Everything seemed to be in order. She nodded at the “nurse.”

“Sure,” she said. “Send them in.”

And when the “nurse” left, Lup sprung into action, because they were stupid enough to leave a _supersoldier_ uncuffed. Her fears were well-founded because when she bust through the thin walls of her hospital room, she found herself in the cold hallway of some weird government building, and then people were shouting and she was running down the hall and looking for _escape, a way out, something to fight with if she needed to_ , and then she was _out_ _,_ crashing through a window and running through an alley, down a street, not looking around, just _booking it_ and —

The lights, the noise, the chattering people. Like a vision out of the movies. Like the Hallwinter Expo. Like nothing Lup had ever seen. Like no place on earth. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. There was just so _much_ and was this _Times Square_ and —

“You gave us quite a scare, Cap,” a woman — older, Black with white hair — said, walking up to her all slow, as if not to spook her. “I told them this was the wrong way to wake you. I apologize for the confusion. You can call me the Director. I lead an organization called SHIELD.”

“Where am I?” Lup asked. She realized she was barefoot.

The Director walked closer, put a hand on Lup’s shoulder as if to comfort, as if to prevent her from running again. “When,” she said gently. “2012. New York City. You’ve been asleep for a while, Captain.”

That statement was so _fucking_ outrageous that there was no way a rational person would believe it. Except that Lucretia was _Black_ and a _woman_ and that wasn’t like the Hunger. Except that Lup was _there_ and it was _Times Square_ and this was the fucking future.

And now she’s helped Lucretia’s team — a team Lucretia wants her to _lead,_ what the _fuck —_ defeat an alien invasion and it’s been a week and it’s been seventy years and nobody else here except the alien has command experience.

She wonders who’s going to do cleanup.

Lup folds her pita bread and takes a bite of her shawarma. Yeah, the future has good sandwiches. If only she had gotten meals like this after battles during the war. The war she can’t believe is over. That it’s _history_ for most people _,_ the way the Great War was history to her, except not quite the same — it’s been a _real_ fuckin’ long time.

She shoves the thought aside. If she focuses on the future, she doesn’t have to think about the past. Between the aliens and half of Manhattan being rubble, there’s enough to be getting on with. She swallows her bite of sandwich, puts it down, and leans forward on her forearms. “So, what now?”

“We just finished defeating a space army, Cap,” Merle says. “Give us a minute. My knees aren’t what they used to be.”

“You just stood there and did weird magic,” Magnus points out.

“Yeah, and my knees aren’t what they used to be,” Merle says again, and Magnus tosses a stray piece of onion at him. Lup grins despite herself.

Hallwinter shakes his head. “Cap’s right,” he says. Considering the way they argued earlier — about weapons, plans of attack, soldiers and mercenaries — it’s a surprise, but outside the influence of alien cognitive weaponry, the bickering seems stupid. “We should start thinking about the next steps.”

“If we don’t, someone else will do it _for_ us,” Kravitz says. “Controlling the narrative is important.”

Hallwinter shoots him an appreciative look and Kravitz shrugs. Huh. Lup didn’t know they knew each other outside of work.

“I’m going to get Hallwinter Industries personnel on the ground, helping with cleanup,” Hallwinter says. “Good press for us and it’ll get things moving faster than if we wait on the government.” He looks at Kravitz and RQ. “No, uh, no offense.”

“We need to check in with SHIELD,” RQ says. “Should probably tell the Director I’m not mind-whammied anymore.”

Kravitz looks faintly pained.

“I need to get back,” Magnus says apologetically. “I need to check on Julia. And get the scepter and Kalen back to Asgard. Midgard _really_ shouldn’t have this stuff?”

“And I have to go check on the wards against the dungeon dimensions,” Merle says, like the dungeon dimensions are a real thing that exist.

Magnus nods, so maybe they are.

Lup takes another bite of her sandwich. Food was a good idea, Hallwinter was right about that. They didn’t get off to a good start, but maybe that’s what happens when you meet someone two minutes before the — an — apocalypse.

Hallwinter looks thoughtful. His hair is all ruffled, and his glasses have a crack in them. The reactor in his chest glows a clear blue. “Is this… going to be a thing?” he asks. “The _Avengers,_ I mean. Are we doing this?”

“Thought you were a solo act, Hallwinter,” Lup says, and then feels slightly bad because she’s not actually trying to antagonize him anymore.

“I explained things badly on the helicarrier,” he says. “When I said I wasn’t looking to join Lucretia’s team I meant that I didn’t want to be on anyone’s payroll. I have other responsibilities. The company…” He shakes his head, as if clearing his thoughts. It dislodges building dust from his hair.

Lup remembers that Hallwinter’s already pulling double-duty. She feels maybe more sympathetic to him now. The guy was ready to fly a nuke into space. That’s... well, there’s some experiences that you have with people that make it impossible to dislike them, and fighting an alien invasion is one of them.

Hallwinter glances at her. “But if we’re going to be getting, uh, well, shit on this scale regularly, then maybe having a team ready is a good idea.”

Lup realizes that he’s waiting for her approval. SHIELD — Lucretia — told her about Captain America’s mythos. The way the legend took off after her death. It seemed like a load of bullshit, but she’s starting to actually believe what they’ve told her, with the way Sildar’s son looks at her. The way the spies and the other strangers-cum-teammates defer to her.

They shouldn’t, is the thing. Lup’s just a soldier out of time.

“And Hallwinter — you still want me to lead it,” she says, a question disguised as a statement.

He grins, rueful. “Yeah. Sounds sappy but the team’s gotta have... a heart, if this is going to work. And call me Barry, please.”

A heart. Half her heart’s dead and buried, which is a stupid, sentimental thing to say, but she never really figured out how to be a person without Taako around. She takes a deep breath. She’s going to have to learn.

A new mission. A new team. Okay.

“Of course,” she says, and gives him her best smile. Not the Captain America one. The crooked smile that’s all _her_. “Call me Lup.”

#

Turns out “Barry” is much better to say during sex than “Hallwinter” anyway.

#

**_Present Day_ **

Lup is on a covert ops ship floating off the coast of China, just shy of international waters, and she’s _pissed_. She just finished rescuing a whole lotta SHIELD operatives being held hostage by French mercenaries, and everything has gone to shit. There was a plan — she’d jump from the helijet first, since she didn’t require a parachute, and take out the guards on the parameter. Kravitz and the strike team would follow. Kravitz would infiltrate the ship, fast and quiet, to kill the engines and stop a potential international incident when China realized there was an American intelligence operation bobbing along their coastline, while she took out the mercenary leaders on the bridge. The strike team would get the hostages out safely. It was a solid plan. A _good_ plan. A plan that should’ve been followed.

A plan that relied on Kravitz joining up with the strike time to escort the hostages to lifeboats and somewhere not crawling with heavily armed mercenaries so that SHIELD could finish clearing it and get the thing the fuck away from China. Lup likes SHIELD’s strike guys just fine, trust them to get the job done and all, but when it comes to hand-to-hand combat in close quarters situations, they’re not the _Reaper_.

Hell, even if they were just talking about _shooting people_ , nobody at SHIELD could match up to Kravitz’s finesse — except maybe RQ, and she uses a bow and arrow.

“Kravitz, where the fuck are you?” Lup asks her ominously silent comms, peeking around a corner and then forging ahead. “You were supposed to rendezvous with the hostages. We’re supposed to get them out of here. You’re —”

Instinct has Lup raising her shield a split-second before the bullets hit, ricocheting off its vibranium surface and puncturing the much less sturdy, steel deck. She lowers it to glare at the giant who steps out from the shadows to loom in front of her. A thick-necked, muscle-bound dude who sneers down at her like he thinks she stands a chance against his heft.

“I don’t have time for this,” she says. “I’ve got an operative M.I.A. Can we _please_ cut this short?”

“You wanna fight hand to hand, little girl?”

Lup rolls her eyes and makes a show of taking the shield off her arm, like she’s planning on lowering it, her fingers curling around the edge of it as she calculates angles in her head. “Sure,” she says. “That’s one way we could do this.”

Lup waits until he shifts into a fighting stance, fists curled and under his chin, then flings the shield — hard — at the deck so it bounces away behind her attacker, up against the wall of the ship, then behind her attacker.

He only has half a second to laugh like he actually thinks she _missed_ before it slams into the back of his head and knocks him forward, onto the ground, with a resonate _thunk_.

Lup jumps to catch the shield before it bounces across the deck and into the ocean. “Or _you_ could choose to cool it with the casual misogyny. Probably too much to ask for, huh?”

Lup kicks the guy’s shoulder and he stays down, so she switches her comms back on, turning her back to him. “Seriously, Kravitz. I’ve had a long night and I need —”

The dude she _thought_ she’d one-hit-K.O.’d slams into her like a freight train, sending them both careening into a closed door. It slams open and Lup barely manages to lunge an extra few feet forward, moving with the momentum of the fall, before they hit the floor. She lands hard, but manages to roll up into a crouch a few feet from her attacker.

“This is awkward.”

Lup twists, looking over her shoulder at her supposed _backup_ for this mission. “Kravitz,” she says. “The fuck?”

He’s bent over a computer terminal, doing something on the workstation. The room is full of banks of them. It’s a spy ship. Lup assumes they’re for the… spying that went on. She’s pretty good with modern tech, but not an expert. She’s dating Barry Hallwinter. He’s a pretty good resource whenever she has a computer issue.

“I’m almost done,” Kravitz says, eyes flicking in her direction, and then there’s a gun in his hand. He raises it and fires a single shot, over Lup’s head, and nails the guy who jumped her between the eyes as he’s pushing himself up.

“Done _what_?” Lup gets to her feet and kicks the dude’s corpse _much_ harder this time. The bullet’s done its job though, and when she turns back to Kravitz, he’s typing away on the computer. “Our mission was to save people and get out.”

“ _Your_ mission was to save people. Mine was this.” Kravitz is all business as he pulls a USB drive out of the computer, then points his gun at the terminal and empties his clip into it.

Lup winces at the noise. “Krav, I’ve got a _boatload_ full of hostages that you were supposed to help protect. We could have lost someone.”

“But you didn’t,” Kravitz says, tucking the drive into his tight-fitting jacket. “You had a whole strike team with them, Lup. Everyone’s fine.”

“Everyone’s fine, but I’m here looking for you instead of escorting the hostages. We had a _plan!_ ” Lup knows Kravitz understands why she’s objecting. They’re supposed to be a team. They’re supposed to work _together._

Before the Battle of New York, in the week between waking up and fighting aliens, SHIELD had Lup working on acclimating herself to the future. Everything was different — louder, brighter, taller — and at the same time nothing had changed. Taako was still gone. Everyone looked at her and saw Captain America, not _Lup_. Sildar was dead. Davenport was holding on, but didn’t remember her half the time.

Lup did her future homework. Learned about history and politics and how a metrocard worked. Chugged along for a week and then, well, aliens attacked.

After the battle, things changed. The world knew she was back. The world had _superheroes_ and she was one of them. Part of a _team_ again, however loosely affiliated they were.

She got offered a real job, with SHIELD, and the job came with a partner-minder-friend. She’s pretty fond of him, actually.

“It was a good plan,” Kravitz says, like he didn’t completely ignore it to check his email or whatever. “Lup, I had a _different_ _mission_.”

Lup glances at the ruined computer in front of Kravitz. There are only so many people who outrank her, and Kravitz will _massage_ the rules — will bend them _just_ to the point of breaking — but he doesn’t disobey a direct order on an op without a very good reason.

“Lucretia,” she says.

The corner of Kravitz’s mouth twitches upwards momentarily. A tell that absolutely has to be deliberate because Kravitz doesn’t _do_ tells. “If you want to talk to someone about my mission on the ship, she’d be a good place to start,” he agrees. “How _are_ the hostages? Should we go find them?”

“You’re changing the subject on purpose,” Lup says, gesturing Kravitz ahead of her. “You go first. I don’t want to lose you again.”

“My mission was need-to-know. I couldn’t tell you about it,” says Kravitz, gamely leading the way. Lup’s pleased, honestly. Kravitz’s willingness to have her at his back means the deviation from her plan really _was_ a procedure thing. If he didn’t trust her anymore, he wouldn’t let her have this opening.

“I’m gonna have a word with Lucretia,” Lup says. “There are people on this ship that were counting on us.”

Kravitz glances back at Lup, and his earlier ghost of a smile back and full-fledged now. “And they were right to,” he says. “I never doubted you, Cap.”

“I’m still mad at you.” Lup points her shield at Kravitz. “The handsome face and tight clothes won’t work on me, babe.”

“Wouldn’t dream of trying to charm you,” Kravitz says, like a liar, as he turns his attention back to the long expanse of ship between them and the hostages. “Barry’s a friend.”

#

Lup doesn’t want to be angry with Kravitz and Lucretia. She still is. Lup’s supposed to be in charge of her team. She’s supposed to know what her team is _doing_ when they’re on missions together. She needs to know where Kravitz is. If something had gone wrong, they wouldn’t have had time to look for him.

She takes a day. She punches some stuff. She tries to cool down. It doesn’t work.

Being Captain America means that when she’s in the Cap outfit she can get in pretty much anywhere she wants as long as she puts enough conviction in her walk. The swagger is half her own self-confidence, half her brother’s talent for performance. Taako was always real good at making people think he knew things he wasn’t supposed to, and that he belonged all kinds of places he didn’t. Putting on the uniform, donning their shared persona, stings a bit every time, but it’s good too — this is Taako’s legacy as much as it is hers.

She uses it to walk right into Lucretia’s office.

“Lucretia, we need to talk.”

Lucretia looks up at Lup and raises an eyebrow. “Captain. Do you remember Brian? He was one of the hostages you and your team rescued,” she says, gesturing towards the well-dressed man sitting in front of her. “The lead analyst, in fact. He was just singing your praises.”

“Captain!” Brian says, and smiles at her, wide and open. “Such an honor being rescued by _ze_ Captain America. I was just telling ze Director zat I really _must_ invite you to my wedding.”

Lup wasn’t expecting to be confronted by a very cheerful former hostage when she burst into Lucretia’s office. In retrospect, it makes sense that Lucretia would debrief the analyst in charge herself.

“You don’t need to invite me to your wedding, babe,” she says, putting on her best Cap voice. “Just doing my duty.”

“Oh, so _charming_ ,” Brian says, and claps his hands together as he gets to his feet. “ _Please_ , darling — having Captain America in attendance would be a coup. Zis is selfish of me, really. I insist. Expect ze invite in ze mail.” He looks at Lucretia, still smiling. “I won’t keep ze Captain waiting. Director.”

“Brian. Good to see you.”

Brian gives Lup one last sunny wave as he leaves. Lup _had_ a whole thing planned out, but it’s completely gone from her head now.

Lucretia’s ahead of her anyway. “I assume this is about you discovering Agent Kravitz during his mission?” she asks, once the door to her office closes behind Brian.

Lup turns to scowl at Lucretia because _right_ — she’s got a good reason for being here and a good reason for being mad. “His mission that _you_ didn’t feel the need to tell me about. He was on my team. He wasn’t where I needed him in the moment, Lucretia. People could have _died._ I need to be able to trust the people I’m working with. I need to know they’ve got my back.”

Lucretia gets to her feet. “I’m glad to have you here, Lup. We need people like you. But sometimes a situation can be… more complex than it seems, on the surface.”

“I had a ship full of people to save,” Lup says. “How complex is that? You could have _told_ me you wanted Kravitz to copy the ship’s hard drive. I would have factored it into my plan.”

If she’d known, she wouldn’t have been relying on Kravitz as an extra layer of projection for the hostages the strike team rescued. She would have allowed extra time for him to get from where he cut the engines back up to the ship’s main server room to copy the data he needed before sending the strike team in. Would have planned _around_ his absence instead of running around the ship looking for him.

Lucretia doesn’t react, just keeps staring at her, and Lup pauses because — shit.

“If I’d factored Kravitz copying the hard drive into my plans, the whole team would know it was being copied. Which you didn’t want. Lucretia, what the fuck are you planning?”

“I’m still your boss,” Lucretia says, a wry smile on her face despite the fact that she’s been _hiding_ things. Spies. _“Try_ not to swear at me. Let me show you something, Lup.” She turns towards the door and gestures for Lup to follow her.

Lucretia leads her down the hall, to the elevator, and scans her palm and her iris. “Project Insight, please,” she says. “Director override.”

The elevator heads down, fast, towards the lobby. In Lup’s experience, the important stuff at SHIELD is kept further up — in some cases, like with the giant, flying aircraft carrier that had served at the Avengers base during the Battle of New York, _literally_ in the sky. Downstairs is finance. HR. She had to have her ID badge photo taken there and the intern who’d taken her photo had asked for her autograph too.

“Is the something you’re showing me the door? Seriously, just tell me what’s going _on._ What do you think I’m going to do? I’m Captain —” Lup cuts herself off when the elevator hits the ground floor and then _keeps_ going down, lower than she’d been aware SHIELD’s Washington, D.C. headquarters went.

Lucretia’s watching her as the elevator car clears twenty feet of solid concrete shaft reemerges in a glass tube. On the other side, there’s a massive hanger — big enough for helicarriers. Big enough for _three_ helicarriers — huge, and loaded with guns.

“What the _fuck_.”

“Language,” Lucretia says, voice dry in a way that means she’s amused. “This is Project Insight. The next step in global protection. Technology that can read a terrorists DNA and target them from the sky. With this, we’ll be able to neutralize a threat before it manifests. Stop attacks before they happen.”

Lup frowns at the helicarriers and their arsenal. Processes the sentiment _stop attacks before they happen_ , the concept of reading _DNA_ from the sky, and then turns to look at Lucretia. “You’re going to hold the world at _gunpoint?_ We’re supposed to be the good guys here.”

“Sometimes doing the right thing means getting your hands dirty,” Lucretia says. “I don’t _want_ to hurt anyone, Captain, but if you had the technology to ensure peace, to put an end to global conflict as we know it — wouldn’t you use it? Wouldn’t you have a _responsibility_ to use it?”

“Uh, pretty fuckin’ sure that nobody’s gonna complain if you don’t fill the sky with giant fuck off guns,” Lup says. “Does Kravitz know about this? Is this what you were stealing shit for?”

“It’s not stealing if it’s your own organization. That was… related. And Agent Kravitz tends not to question direct orders,” Lucretia says, skipping straight past dry to downright amused. “Not like some members of this organization.”

“Yeah, well, somebody needs to call you out, Lucretia,” Lup says. “And I’m gonna be first in line for this one — this is wrong. It’s wrong and we’re supposed to be better than this. We _have_ to be better.”

Lucretia smiles at Lup, but there’s no mirth in it this time. She looks tired. Older than she should. “I admire you, Lup,” she says. “I admire your morality and your determination to stand by what you believe, but sometimes someone needs to be the pragmatist. Right now, that someone is me.” She gestures to the helicarriers and their guns. “Nobody _wants_ these ships to have to fire, but Project Insight has been years in the making. The world will be safer because of this.”

“You’re taking away the world’s _freedom_ and you’re not even asking them first,” Lup says. “Lucretia, come on. You _know_ this is wrong.”

“Sometimes there are no good choices,” Lucretia says. “There are just the choices we make.”

“This is a bad choice,” Lup says, voice firm with conviction. “We _did_ this kind of thing before. Pointing giant weapons at each other. Making people live in fear. You’re threatening the _entire world_.”

“Project Insight is the next step in global protection,” Lucretia says. “It’s almost ready for launch and —”

“This isn’t protection,” Lup says, cutting Lucretia off. “This is a _threat_.”

Lucretia nods, as if conceding Lup’s point. As if saying that, sure, Lup’s right, it _is_ a threat, but that’s not gonna change anything. “If you would like to lodge a protest now, I’m afraid you’ll have to go above my head to the Defense Secretary, but I’m sure Secretary Miller will be happy to meet with Captain America.”

Lup knows when she’s being blown off, even if she’s a little flabbergasted that Lucretia is the one doing it to her — that Lucretia is standing her telling her she’s _wrong_ to worry about the guns SHIELD is going to point at the world.

Lup turns on her heel and storms back to the elevator.

#

Lup goes back to the museum. She goes to the museum to look at Taako’s memorial plaque, to watch the newsreel footage of them together, laughing, and wishes that Taako were here for her to complain to. She knows Kravitz is _around,_ lurking somewhere in D.C., but he’s part of what Lup wants to complain about. She could call Barry, but _technically_ he doesn’t have security clearance.

Mostly she misses her brother.

Lup walks around the Washington Mall until the sun goes down, then gets on her motorcycle and heads back to the apartment SHIELD rented for her stay in D.C. They keep trying to get her to _stay here_ , but Barry’s in New York. She’s not gonna leave him for her job. Especially not when Lucretia and SHIELD are apparently making decisions Lup fundamentally disagrees with.

She’s still stewing over the helicarriers and Project Insight when she opens the door to her apartment and hears music — the radio, volume low, playing something French. Lup’s shield is in the living room, propped up against the wall where she dropped it coming in from the last mission.

The living room is _also_ where her radio is.

Lup moves fast, skidding into the room and grabbing her shield in one smooth motion, brandishing it at the occupied chair in the corner of the room where — where Lucretia is sitting, alone in the dark.

Lup frowns, lowering her shield. “Lucretia,” she says. “What do you want? Do you break into a lot of —”

Lucretia holds up a hand to cut her off, then pulls out her phone, typing something on it one handed. “I’m sorry to barge in like this, Lup,” she says. “We left things in a bad place. I wanted to apologize.”

Lup raises her eyebrows. Lucretia turns her phone so she can see the screen. It reads: “ _They’re listening. Don’t know who’s compromised._ ”

“Okay,” says Lup, glancing around the apartment. Lucretia must mean SHIELD. Which means Lucretia thinks there’s a mole at SHIELD. “You couldn’t have waited until the morning to say something?” She reaches over and flicks the overhead light on, then lets out a startled sound when she sees Lucretia illuminated by the light.

Lucretia looks — bad. There’s dried blood in her white hair and one of her eyes is half-swollen shut. She’s holding her right arm to her chest like maybe it’s seriously injured. Lup wasn’t expecting _this._

Lucretia gestures towards Lup’s hand by the switch, shaking her head, and when Lup doesn’t get what she’s saying, gets up from the chair and reaches over to flip the lights off.

Two shots shatter the pane glass window on the other side of the room, and Lucretia goes down, hard —

Lup raises her shield to cover herself and drags Lucretia out of the window’s sight line, into the hallway. Her door bursts open and Noelle, the cute nurse from next door, is beside her, gun in hand.

“Captain, are you all right?” she asks, eyes scanning the apartment for danger.

It _is_ a SHIELD building. Lup probably should’ve known Noelle wasn’t _just_ a nurse. “The Director’s been shot,” she says. “Assailant’s on the roof next door. Call it in and tell them I’m in pursuit.”

“In pur —”

Lup doesn’t give Noelle time to finish the question. She takes a few steps back, then runs towards the already broken window at top speed, jumping through it and executing a rolling landing on the rooftop of the building next door. The shooter is already running — already booking it across the top of the next building — and he’s _fast_ like no ordinary person should be fast.

He’s fast like _she_ is.

She takes off after him, half her attention on Lucretia’s assailant and the other on the rooftop in front of her. She’s mentally judging her jumps as she goes, pushing herself to go _faster_ , run _harder._ The guy may be _good_ , but he’s not her.

She gains on him, making up the distance he had on her with his head start, jumping from roof to roof, and then they’re on the same building — the same rooftop.

Lup’s doesn’t wait to take her shot. She hurls her shield at the dude, aiming for his torso to take him the _fuck_ out, and he — catches it. He snatches the hurtling projectile that is her shield out of the air with one hand like it’s _nothing_. Like it’s a fucking _frisbee_.

The man on the rooftop turns to face her. He’s dressed all in black with a mask over most of his face. His left arm — the arm that caught her shield — gleams like Barry’s suit. Like it’s metal.

He throws the shield back at Lup — hard but clumsy, because getting precision with it takes work — and it slams into her chest with so much force it sends her stumbling back a few steps, has her almost falling over onto her ass.

When Lup looks up, the man is gone.

#

The apartment is crawling with SHIELD agents when she returns. Lucretia’s on a gurney outside, surrounded by EMTs. Lup runs to her side.

“I couldn’t catch him,” she says, jogging alongside as an EMT wheels Lucretia towards the ambulance. Lup feels startlingly useless. She’s _Captain America_ — she should be able to catch one dude, even if she’s still shaken by him catching her shield in midair. “I’m sorry. I tried, but he — I don’t know what he was.”

Lucretia grabs Lup’s hand, presses something into her palm. One of the EMTs is trying to put an oxygen mask on her, but Lucretia pushes them aside and tugs Lup down so their faces are level. Lup can hear the way Lucretia’s breath rattles in her chest, wet and labored.

“Take it,” she says, urgency and pain thick in her voice. “Don’t trust anyone.”

“Of course,” Lup says, and Lucretia’s eyes roll back as she passes out. The EMT finally gets the mask in place and gently nudges Lup away.

Lup lets herself be moved. She has to let go of Lucretia, let her be whisked off in the ambulance to the hospital. She should get on her bike and head there too. Lucretia’ll go into surgery right away. Modern medicine has done wonders — people survive things now that they wouldn’t have survived before. People make it through injuries that would have been a death sentence during the war.

When Lup opens her hand to see what Lucretia gave her, she’s holding the USB Kravitz copied on the ship. She’s holding whatever information Lucretia was willing to sacrifice a ship full of hostages for.

Information Lucretia says Lup can’t trust _anyone_ with.

#

Lup calls Barry on her way to the hospital.

“Are you _driving_ right now?” Barry asks, his voice tinny in her earpiece as she heads towards the hospital. “You know I hate when you call me on the road.”

“Babe, you call me when you’re _flying,”_ Lup says.

“Yeah, but you’re not in a metal suit.”

Lup would laugh if half her brain wasn’t focused on whether or not Lucretia was going to be okay. “I’m durable,” she says. “Barry, Lucretia was shot tonight. She was over at my apartment and someone — it was an assassination attempt, I think. He was a professional. He was — he outran me. He _caught my shield._ ”

There’s a long, staticy silence on the other end of the call. “Fuck,” Barry says, eventually. “Attempt, you said. Is she —?”

“I’m on my way to the hospital now.” Lup swallows past a lump of fear in her throat. “Is this line secure?”

Another pause. Barry doing some tech stuff, probably. Lup likes technology a lot, loves what the future’s done with it, but she never bothered to get into the details like Taako used to. Taako and Sildar lost _hours_ picking Hunger tech apart to figure out exactly what the fuck they were doing with the — she now knows — Asgardian shit they were piggybacking on.

“It’s secure,” Barry says, finally. “No prying ears. Lup, what —”

“Lucretia passed me a USB she got Kravitz to copy off a ship. I thought we were just rescuing hostages. It was — Lucretia told me not to trust anyone and I don’t know… It’s gotta be encrypted or something, right? I don’t know how to break that, but I need to know what I’m dealing with here, babe. I need to know what’s going on.”

“Kravitz could…” Barry trails off. “You don’t think she meant not to trust _Kravitz,_ do you?”

“I don’t know,” Lup says. “Is there any way you could take a look at this thing and tell me?”

“If you plug it into a computer connected to the net? Sure. Not from your pocket though.” Barry’s silent for a moment. “I guess flying out to DC would look suspicious, huh?”

Lup snorts. The hospital is in sight now. “Hella suspicious, yeah,” she says. “I’ve got this. Don’t worry. I’ll call when I’m by a computer. Let you know what’s going on with Lucretia.” She pulls into the hospital parking lot and cuts the ignition. Maybe it’s in her head, but she can _feel_ the tension in the air, like the crackling calm before a thunderstorm hits, like the moment before the Bifrost opens — something’s coming.

“Babe? I love you.”

Barry laughs, warm and familiar. “I love you too,” he says. “Let’s not make this a horror movie goodbye thing, okay? I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Yeah,” Lup agrees, grinning. “Not a horror movie, promise. Talk soon.”

#

The warmth Lup feels after talking to Barry dissipates as soon as Lup finds Lucretia’s operating room. When she opens the door to the observation room beside it, Killian and Kravitz are there already. Kravitz’s eyes flick away from Lucretia briefly, to Lup, when she walks in, but other than that he doesn’t move from his spot by the window.

“How is she?” Lup asks, but nothing about the bloody operating room or the way the doctors are rushing around looks good.

“They’re trying to stabilize her,” Killian says. “Lup, what happened? They’re saying she got shot at your apartment?”

Lup doesn’t bother correcting Killian. SHIELD can keep shoving D.C. at her, but the missions they send her on don’t compare to living in _her_ city. Her apartment is back in New York, in Hallwinter Tower. Kravitz has a place there too, although honestly Lup’s pretty sure Kravitz has a place in a few cities. He’s the kinda guy who has backup plans for his backup plans.

“It was a hit,” she says. “Professional. I tried to chase him, but he was… fast. Unnaturally fast. Like he was _enhanced._ ” She frowns, staring into the hospital room but only registering her reflection in the glass. The confusion on her face. It shouldn’t be possible for someone to move like the man on the roof moved. For someone to be that strong. She keeps thinking about _robots_ , maybe. “He caught my shield out of the air. He had a metal arm.”

It’s only because she’s looking at their reflections and not Lucretia on the table that she sees the brief flicker of recognition on Kravitz’s face, there and gone and smoothed over right away, as if his face never held a human expression in his life. From anyone else, nothing. A moment of mistaken recognition, maybe.

From Kravitz? Might as well have been a panic attack.

“I’ll tell our field agents to be on the lookout for someone matching the description,” Killian says. “Anything else?”

Lup shakes her head. “My height, I guess. Wore all black. Had a mask covering his face. Do you think —”

She’s cut off by visible and audible panic in the operating room. The doctors calling for epinephrine. Trying to restart Lucretia’s heart. The sound in the room is drowned out by the ringing in Lup’s ears as she watches them try to — Lup clutches at the ledge underneath the window, her fingers pressed against the glass, tries to keep her breathing steady. Tries to _will_ the doctors in the other room to succeed.

They call it.

Lup steps back, away from the glass, and looks at Killian. She has tears in her eyes. She looks angry. Kravitz is — gone. Just _gone_ , and Lup is — Lup is angry too, abruptly, at Kravitz for _leaving_. Not sticking around for Lucretia, who trusted him enough to send him to retrieve whatever’s on the USB in Lup’s pocket.

She turns to Killian, who’s wiping her tears away like she’s annoyed with them. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Killian says, and pauses. “Not _fine_ , but I’ll _be_ fine. I need to pass on your description. We’re gonna catch the bastard who did this, Lup. Don’t worry.”

Lup nods. “I’m gonna — Kravitz,” she says, and squeezes Killian’s shoulder before leaving the room to hunt Kravitz down. That dick.

He knows something and he left the room. Lup’s trying not to let the whole _don’t trust anyone_ thing get to her, but he’s been acting suspicious as fuck. She doesn’t _want_ to suspect Kravitz, but he’s not exactly making it easy, bolting from the room. He should’ve —

Kravitz grabs her arm and yanks her into an empty hospital room, his hand over her mouth cutting off her yelp before it leaves her lungs. Lup throws an elbow back to knock him away, but he’s slippery as fuck. Dodges the blow. He lets her go and by the time she turns to throw a punch, he’s got his back against the wall with his hands raised in surrender.

“What the _fuck_ , Krav? What’s going _on?_ ”

“The man you saw,” Kravitz says, expression blank and deadly serious. “It was his left arm?”

Lup hesitates, then nods. “You recognized the description. You know him.”

Kravitz pauses, then lifts the hem on his — honestly, absurdly tight — shirt. Lup is about to ask what the fuck he’s doing, but then he taps his stomach, pulling her attention down to an ugly scar. Lup was — _is_ — a soldier. She recognizes the aftermath of a bullet wound when she sees it.

“A man matching his description did this,” he says. “I was on a mission. Soon after I joined SHIELD. Extraction. Escorting an engineer out of a war zone and into SHIELD custody. Our tires got blown out and the car flipped. I dragged my asset out and shielded him with my body. Your shooter shot through me.”

Lup hisses a breath in through her teeth. “And you survived that?”

“I’m resourceful,” Kravitz says, tugging his shirt back down. “Ballistics are going to come back as unmarked slugs. No rifling. Soviet made.” He pauses. There’s a lot implied in that pause.

Lup wants to press further, but she’s not sure Kravitz would tell her anything. This isn’t her _friend_ Kravitz — the one who met her at the museum and asked her about her brother — this is the other him, the Reaper. This is a man who other SHIELD agents are wary around — who invites rumors about being some sort of automaton.

“They call him the Winter Soldier,” Kravitz says, eventually. “Or at least, he’s called that by the people who believe he exists. He’s credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years.” His lips twitch into a smile, but there’s no humor behind it. “The assassin’s assassin. A ghost story for ghost stories.”

“Sounds like a myth,” Lup says.

Kravitz’s eyebrow twitches upwards and he looks more human now — more like the asshole she knows and likes. “And what are you, Captain America?”

Kravitz has a point.

“Lucretia told me not to trust anyone,” Lup says. “What did you steal from the ship?”

Kravitz shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says, and when Lup takes a step towards him he frowns at her. “Lup, it’s not my job to _know_ what I’m stealing. I was asked to copy the hard drive so I did.” He pauses. “You think this has something to do with the ship. Why?”

Lup digs the USB out of her pocket, holds it up so Kravitz can see it. “Lucretia passed me this, just before the ambulance took her.”

“It’s encrypted,” Kravitz says. “No one but Lucretia —”

“Barry’s gonna open it.” Kravitz gives her an unimpressed look and Lup shrugs. “Lucretia should’ve known better. I’m not gonna hide things from my _team._ I told her that when I went and yelled at her about your secret spy shit. Besides, have you got a better idea for cracking it?”

“No,” Kravitz admits, after a moment. “Barry was a good choice.”

“I know,” Lup says. “Listen, we need —”

“Cap?”

She stops talking when someone outside calls for her, chewing on her bottom lip. There’s a chance she’s being paranoid, thinking that Lucretia meant _SHIELD_ when she said _anyone_.

Except SHIELD’s about to put big fuck-off guns in the sky and maybe Lup’s lost some of her faith in their cause. Maybe Kravitz’s suspicion is rubbing off on her.

Maybe she’s not being paranoid enough.

She passes Kravitz the drive. “Hold on to this for me,” she says. “I’ll be back as soon as I’m debriefed.”

#

The Defence Secretary’s face is pinched, all sympathy and understanding when Lup enters his office. “When they told me the news, I was devastated,” he says, standing to offer Lup his hand. “The Director and my mother were good friends. She was like family to me.”

Lup had no idea Secretary Miller and Lucretia knew each other outside of work. She’s never _met_ Lucas Miller before today, but now he’s interim Director of SHIELD as well as the Secretary of Defence.

It makes sense. He and Lucretia would have had to work closely together to make sure SHIELD wasn’t stepping on too many toes internationally — the work the Avengers do crosses a lot of borders — and Lup can’t imagine it’s easy to convince other countries they should allow a team of superpowered foreigners free reign.

Lucas’s office is too big, too nice — all shiny surfaces and leather. It looks like some teenager’s fantasy of what an adult office should look like. Maybe Lup is just being uncharitable because she got called away from the hospital for this meeting and she’s still on edge from Lucretia’s last words to her _._

She takes his hand. “I’m sorry for you loss, Secretary.”

“Please, call me Lucas,” Lucas says, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I may be temporary Director of SHIELD and the Secretary of Defence, but you’re _Captain America_.”

“Lucas,” Lup says. There’s something about him that rubs her the wrong way. The way he says _Captain America_ , maybe — poorly hidden skepticism. But she can’t fault that. She’s got an exhibition at the Smithsonian on right now. It makes her seem like a relic. “I’m sorry to be blunt, but I just came from the hospital. I haven’t really had time to _process_ anything yet. Why’d you want to see me?”

“Lucretia was shot in your apartment, Captain,” Lucas says. “I understand that you chased the person responsible? Did you get a good look at him?” He leans against his desk. “I want to find the people responsible for this.”

Lup stays where she is, keeps her posture army-upright. Very Captain America. “Not a good look, no,” she says. “He was all in black. A mask over most of his face.” Something makes her hesitate even though Killian’s got the full description of what she saw.. Kravitz telling her about the Winter Soldier, maybe. “One of his sleeves was silver. Like a uniform, maybe? He slipped away pretty fast.”

“A shame,” says Lucas. “I’ll make sure our strike teams have your description. You never know what might turn up. And — one more thing.” Lucas picks up a tablet from his desk. It looks different from the ones she’s seen other agents using. Modified, maybe. When Lucas puts his thumb to it, it lights up. “Your last mission was a hostage rescue, correct? A SHIELD vessel off the coast of China?”

That’s on record. “Yeah,” she says. “It was a successful op.”

“No injuries to the hostages. Impressive,” Lucas agrees. “Captain, we looked into who _hired_ the mercenaries who took that boat. Do you know what we found?”

Lup has a feeling she’s not going to like whatever the answer is. She shakes her head. “No clue.”

“Lucretia.”

That — “No,” she says, frowning. “Sorry, Secretary, but your intelligence is wrong. Lucretia’s the one who _sent me_ on that mission. Why would she endanger lives like that? What purpose could taking a boat hostage and then sending SHIELD in to rescue the hostages possibly serve?”

“I don’t know,” Lucas says, looking up at Lup, eyes keen behind his glasses. “But the money trail our techs followed from their bank accounts led back to a sell account in the Cayman Islands. Our hackers were able to determine that it belonged to the Director. I don’t want to believe she was guilty of anything anymore than you do, Captain. I certainly don’t want to damager her reputation in death. But I’ve got to ask — to your knowledge, was anything removed from the ship?”

Lup thinks about Kravitz and the thumbdrive. “Like what?” she asks. “Maps? We got the hostages off the ship as quickly as possible.”

“Your strike team says both you and the Reaper failed to make a scheduled rendezvous.”

Of _course_ Lup gets assigned the strike team made of snitches. “Kravitz had trouble with one of the mercenaries,” she says. “I helped him out. It slowed both of us down and knocked out Kravitz’s earpiece. I discussed it with Lucretia when we returned.”

Lucas stares at her. It’s obvious he doesn’t believe her, but Lup doesn’t know the guy from Adam; _Kravitz_ is her friend. “I see,” he says, and taps his fingers against his tablet screen. “Thank you for your cooperation, Captain. That will be all.”

Lup has a bad feeling about this. “No problem,” she says. “Happy to help.”

Lucas doesn’t walk her out of his office, just sits at his desk, still playing on his tablet. Lup’s trying real hard to put Lucas’s behaviour down to him being socially awkward and upset over Lucretia’s death, but who the fuck knows now? The past couple of days have been a clusterfuck.

Lup leaves Lucas’s office and heads to the elevator. Kravitz is — hopefully — still waiting for her at the hospital.

She steps inside, pushes the button for the lobby, and presses her forehead against the glass wall, looking out the side of the Triskelion at the Potomac. She doesn’t even know if Lucretia has _family_ out there. Maybe Killian would know. She worked with Lucretia longer. Kravitz might know too. He’s got a thing for people’s secrets.

Lucretia was apparently friends with Lucas Miller’s mom. He’d know.

Her introspection is interrupted by the elevator stopping at the next floor. Lup turns to face the doors so SHIELD employees don’t walk in on her looking maudlin. Five men in strike team uniforms and two in suits board. Only the men in suits are obviously uncomfortable, obviously sweating. And the strike team looks _nervous._

“Captain,” says one of the strike guys. “Sorry to hear about the Director. Real shame.”

“Yeah, it was,” she says, watching him closely. “Thank you.”

The elevator car stops again and four guys who look less like SHIELD agents and more like New Jersey bouncers get on. The car is crowded and everyone shuffles around to make more room. Shuffles, Lup can’t help but notice, so they’ve got her surrounded.

Lup’s really, _really_ not having a good week.

She shifts in place, wishing her shield wasn’t currently locked onto the back of her motorcycle. Bringing it inside had seemed paranoid. Kinda rude.

Nine against one in a glass elevator. Cool.

“Look, it’s been a long day,” she says. “If we’re gonna do this, can we do this?”

The answer to her question is the guy in front of her pulling out a weapon that looks like a fancy cattle prod and whirling around to jab her with it. Lup twists out of the way — people never expect Captain America to be _slippery_ — and grabs his wrist, yanking him forward. The prod hits one of the men trying to grab her from behind — one of the men trying to grab her from _all_ directions — and there are _nine_ of them. Nine of them and someone else has the same fucking weapon.

The second rod hits her ribs and her whole body goes rigid with pain as a bolt of electricity courses through her nervous system.

It’s enough of an opening to let the men behind her get a firm hold on her. They drag her back and the men in suits pull out sturdy looking cuffs. There’s no fucking _way_ she’s gonna let those go on.

Lup lashes out, slamming her heel into the kneecap of one of the men holding her right arm and he drops his hold. It gives her just enough time to slam her fist into the face of the man holding the cuff. It goes flying from his hands and she kicks him in the groin as hard as she fucking can. She _knows_ how much that hurts and he fucking deserves it.

There’s nine of them, but in the small space it feels like more — feels like an _army_ of men coming at her, all at once. Lup can’t plan, can only react — knee in a vulnerable stomach, a jab of her fist to someone’s throat, a foot to the back of a knee.

“I had a _bad night_ and I’m having a bad morning,” Lup says, slamming her right elbow back so hard she hears a distinct _crunch_ from the face of the dude trying to grapple her from behind. “My friend is dead and _this_ is how I need to spend today? Come _on_.”

“It’s not personal,” says the guy who offered his condolences on Lucretia. Then he hits her with a cattle prod.

Lup bites back a yelp and fights through the pain burning up and down her left side so she can slam her fist into his face and knock him back — hard — against the elevator doors. “Sure _feels_ personal, babe.”

She’s the only one left standing in the elevator. Breathing heavy. She’s thinking very uncharitable thoughts about SHIELD as an employer. Lup doesn’t know what she did to attract this much negative attention, but _something_ is going on with SHIELD and Lup’s gonna find out what the fuck it is.

The elevator comes to a stop and when the doors open, there are people waiting — soldiers, reading to fight. Lup gives them an unimpressed look, raising her fists and shifting into a fighting stance. “Fine,” she says. “Let’s get this over with. I have plans this afternoon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed this chapter, please leave a comment and kudos! <3
> 
> anonymousAlchemist is off to be a fancy law boi starting this week, so today kicks off our new update schedule: posting every other Thursday! Also!! Over on tumblr the-anchorless-moon drew Lup and Taako looking bad ass!! Please go like and reblog [his awesome art.](https://the-anchorless-moon.tumblr.com/post/177073905104/lup-and-taako-from-anonymousalchemist-and)
> 
> You can come say hello to both of us on tumblr too, where we're [anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)!


	5. Old Dogs, New Tricks

Kravitz is very good at compartmentalizing. He’s a spy. It’s a required skill. When he gets word that Captain America has been branded an enemy of SHIELD and is wanted in connection to Lucretia’s murder, there’s still a part of him that very badly wants five minutes to deal with all the shit the world’s decided to throw at him this week. There’s footage of her emerging from a stairwell and running through the open lobby of the Triskelion to the parking garage. There’s footage of her single-handedly taking a helijet with just her shield and her motorcycle, then dropping into the Potomac to escape capture.

Kravitz is good at compartmentalizing and that’s good because it means Kravitz can pointedly _not_ think about metal arms and the memory of a bullet tearing through his flesh and focus on the immediate problem at hand instead. It requires his full attention anyway.

Barry calls and Kravitz lets it go to voicemail. It seems prudent when he’s preoccupied with staying out of sight in the hospital. If Lup were anyone else, she wouldn’t _immediately_ return to her last known location, but Lup is Lup and she said she’d be back to meet him here, so she’s going to be back.

It’s a good thing Kravitz is on Lup’s side or she’d be in trouble. He has a message notification on his SHIELD phone — orders telling him to bring Captain America in if sees her, he assumes. He’s ignoring that too. He’ll have to ditch both phones soon if he and Lup are running, but for now the hospital is a place Kravitz has a plausible reason for lurking. Lucretia’s body hasn’t left the morgue.

He’s waiting maybe half an hour before Lup comes down the corridor wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, in sneakers that are a couple sizes too big, keeping her head down in a way that broadcasts her desire to not be noticed as clearly as if she were yelling it. Kravitz resists the urge to roll his eyes and slips out into the hallway beside her when she passes the room he’s hiding it.

“SHIELD has some interesting things to say about you,” he says, keeping his voice soft and pleasant. There are plenty of other people in the hospital, visitors and staff alike. Their best option is blending in and Kravitz is a lot better at doing that than Lup. He pulls out his SHIELD issued phone, as a woman passes them in the hall, and slips it into her purse. “I assume. I haven’t opened the message they sent me, but I _did_ see the news in the waiting room.”

Lup glances at him, trying and failing to look nonchalant, and then stops dead in her tracks, staring at him. “Krav,” she says. “What are you _wearing?”_

Kravitz is wearing scrubs. They’re purple and slightly too big to add bulk to his frame. He can’t do much about his hair besides put it up in a messier bun than he normally would. He looks as average as possible. Forgettable. Any nurse in any hospital. SHIELD agents are mostly white and Kravitz lifted the badge of a Black, male nurse. He’ll pass any cursory inspection.

“Clothes,” he says. “I have some for you too.”

“Where did you get _clothes_? Did you go shopping?”

“We’re in a hospital,” Kravitz says, taking Lup’s hand in his and shifting so he’s turned towards her, his body language projecting that she’s the only thing he’s paying attention to as he glances up and down the hallway for anyone watching them. “People bring extra clothes when they go to work.”

“You _stole_ —”

“Yes,” Kravitz says. “They won’t miss them. Come on.” Kravitz opens the door to the closet he stashed the change of clothes for Lup in and nudges her inside. Lup looks unimpressed. “We have more important things to worry about than stolen clothes. You’re all over the news and the hospital is crawling with SHIELD agents.” He fishes the bag of stolen clothes out from behind a rack of cleaning supplies and holds it out. “Please change.”

The please helps mollify her. Kravitz can practically see the tension rolling off Lup in waves as she takes the bag from her. “You said it was on the news?”

“Lup, you took out a helijet escaping. Of _course_ it was on the news.”

“Right.” Lup turns her back to Kravitz and strips off the hoodie. He looks away. “You don’t have to help me, Krav. If you do, SHIELD will be after you too.”

Kravitz knows that, but Lup knows he knows. She’s offering him an out. “It’s suspicious, don’t you think?” he asks, after a moment. He’s had time to think this through. “Lucretia sends me in for the data on that drive. She ends up dead at the Winter Soldier’s hands. Then SHIELD brands you an enemy?” He snorts. “It’s transparent as glass. Someone is trying to cover something up.”

“SHIELD has helicarriers prepped,” Lup says. “Three big ones, fully armed. Lucretia said they could predict a threat and take it out before it happened. That they’re the future of national security.”

Kravitz has heard that kind of logic before. It’s the kind of reasoning they used in the Red Room on the rare occasions they felt the need to justify their actions. Targets who were a little _too_ chummy with Americans. Rumours that stood in for reason. Someone was acting suspicious. Someone had spoken out of turn. Someone had slighted the program, their handlers.

Kravitz has killed men over office rivalries. The ability to point a gun at someone’s head and pull the trigger from a distance, the plausible deniability of saying you weren’t really responsible while shaping the world into exactly what you wanted it to be — it’s exactly the kind of rhetoric that made people mad with power.

“Someone at SHIELD is dirty and Lucretia was trying to expose them,” he says. “Now they’re targeting you.”

“I think they know she told me something.” There’s a pause. “I’m changed now. You can look.” Kravitz turns his head. Lup, dressed in the skinny jeans, a t-shirt, and the more appropriately sized pink hoodie he stole for her, still looks like Captain America. It’s the way she holds herself and the look in her eyes — the determination. “I don’t know if SHIELD knows about the drive, but they’re definitely… something is up, Krav. Something big.”

Big enough to bring the Winter Soldier in to kill Lucretia. Kravitz nods and pulls the drive from his pocket, offering it to Lup. “Your boyfriend’s been calling me,” he says. “The nursing stations have computers we can use.”

“Let’s find an easily distracted nurse,” Lup says, pushing past him and out of the closet.

She pulls out her phone. Kravitz plucks it out of her hand before she can make a call, giving her an unimpressed look. “You know they can track this, right?”

“I ditched the SHIELD one,” she says. “That’s the phone Barry gave me.”

“Uh-huh,” says Krav. “They’re going to be covering all their bases tracking you down. Why do you think Barry’s been calling me and not you?”

Lup frowns. “How would they even _know_ about it?”

“They’re an intelligence agency, Lup,” Kravitz says. “Assume you’re being watched at all times because you are.” He pauses. “Give me sixty seconds, then figure out a distraction.”

Kravitz walks to the nurse's station. Lup is _more_ than capable of coming up with a decent distraction in under a minute. He leans against the station counter and smiles at the woman behind it, easy and open. “Busy down here today?”

“It’s always busy,” the nurse — Gina, according to her name tag — says, looking him over. Not unfriendly yet. She tilts her head, smiling at him, a little flirty. Kravitz can work with that. “You look like a man who want something from me.”

Kravitz laughs and leans in closer. “You caught me,” he says. “Dr. Park in wound care sent me looking for someone who could help with a patient that just got transferred to us. Doesn’t speak a word of English and our Russian speakers aren’t around. We’re pretty sure his daughter’s on her way, but Dr. Park said there might be someone down here?”

Gina rolls her eyes. “Because none of us have work to do today. Yeah, I think Victoria speaks Russian. Hold on, I’ll —”

Somewhere down the hall, something falls over. Loudly.

Kravitz and Gina stare at each other for a long moment, then Kravitz leans back and — yep, Lup’s managed to knock over a shelf full of hospital gowns. A little aggressive, but definitely distracting. “Jesus,” he says. “The benefits of wound care — nobody’s that lively.”

“Motherfucker,” Gina says, getting to her feet. “Hold that thought while I figure out what fresh nonsense this is.”

Kravitz smiles and pointedly doesn’t offer to help clean up the mess, stepping behind the desk as Gina leaves. “I’ll stay out of the way, no worries. Take your time.”

As soon as Gina’s out of sight, he sits at her stations and dials Barry’s number on Lup’s phone. It’s a risk, but it’s better than going through the hospital lines.

Barry answers before the first ring finishes going through. “Lup? Hon, you shouldn’t —”

Kravitz already knows he shouldn’t, but right now he doesn’t have another choice. “Not Lup.”

It only throws Barry off for a second. “Okay,” he says. “Krav, are you with Lup? What the fuck is —”

“No time,” Kravitz says. “SHIELD’s dirty, or someone at SHIELD is. Lup’s safe. I’m sending you an email from a computer I need you to access. I’m going to plug in a thumbdrive and I _really_ hope you can read it fast because I’m guessing Lucretia’s assassination has a lot to do with whatever’s on it.”

There’s a pause as Barry takes that in. The sound of rapid footsteps, distantly, on the other end of the line. Kravitz uses the time to login to a burner email account and shoot Barry an innocuous message about the weather.

“Okay,” Barry says, sounding a bit out of breath. “I was making a grilled cheese, but I’m in my lab now. JARVIS, have you got Kravitz’s location?”

“Agent Kravitz is currently at George Washington University Hospital, sir,” JARVIS says. “I have the IP address of his computer and am networking in.”

“Cool,” says Barry. “Kravitz, when you’re ready, JARVIS and I are here.”

Lup appears from around the corner and gives him a quick thumbs up. “I distracted them.”

Kravitz snorts. “I heard,” he says. “Barry’s on the phone. Barry, I’m going to plug the drive in now.”

He ducks under the desk to stick the drive into the terminal and hears Barry hum on the other end of the line. “This is fascinating,” he says. “The data is protected by some kind of AI. It’s — JARVIS, can you —”

“I’m trying, sir,” JARVIS says, as pleasant as always. “I’m afraid SHIELD has been alerted as to the whereabouts of Agent Kravitz and the Captain.”

“We knew it was likely,” Kravitz says, sitting back up and watching the screen. He has no idea what’s happening, but there’s a program running. “Barry?”

“I’m trying to — JARVIS is copying the program and we’re quaranteening it on a server here in New York,” Barry says. “We’ll cut it off from the network. Keep working on decrypting it and getting rid of this AI, but whoever programmed this thing is almost as smart as me.”

Barry says it matter-of-factly, like it’s a given. Kravitz can’t help grinning. “Almost?”

“Almost,” Barry says. “We’ve got the origin point for the data. It’s…” He stops. “Maybe we don’t. New Jersey? Does that seem right?”

“New Jersey?” Kravitz repeats, frowning, because, sure, danger and betrayal can come from anywhere, but _Jersey_?

“Hold on,” Barry says, and a browser window pops up on the screen and opens Google maps. Kravitz watches as an invisible hand types in a latitude and longitude.

“What about New Jersey?” Lup asks, leaning over the desk to peer at the screen as the map reloads.

“Barry traced the data to its origin point,” Kravitz says. “The place it was created.”

“I know what origin point means, Krav,” Lup says. She’s frowning at the screen like maybe she also knows what the fuck could possibly be in Wheaton, New Jersey.

“You recognize the town?”

“That’s where they made me,” she says. “That’s Camp Leigh.”

Kravitz hears a shouted order at the end of the hall — to spread out and look for Captain America. “SHIELD’s here,” he tells Barry. “You copy the program?”

“Not yet,” Barry says. “JARVIS almost has it. Give us a minute and we can —”

Kravitz pulls the drive from the computer and gets to his feet. “We need to move. I’ll call from a secure line, when it’s safe.” He hangs up and then drops the phone in the trash, picking up a file and a pair of reading glasses that probably belong to Gina as he walks out from behind the desk.

“Walk slow,” he says, keeping his voice low as he flips open the file. He holds the glasses out to Lup. “Wear these and duck your head. Look sad.”

“You stole her _glasses,_ Kravitz,” Lup says. “She _needs_ those.”

“ _We_ need to escape here without being arrested for treason.”

Lup makes a face, but takes the glasses, sliding them on. “Fine, but I can’t see a thing in these.”

“They’re temporary,” Kravitz says. He’s not sure what to do. They have the drive still. If they can’t make it work here and if SHIELD will be on them before Barry and JARVIS can copy it — and if they stay local that seems likely — then they need to follow the one lead they have. “How do you feel about a road trip?”

Lup glances up at him and grins. “Jersey?”

“Jersey,” Kravitz says. “I’ll steal us a car.”

#

Driving to Jersey with Kravitz helps keep Lup distracted. She likes driving. Kravitz has changed out of his stolen scrubs at the hospital and is and back in all black everything and it’s a relief. He looks like himself now, not some smiling nurse in purple, all soft and friendly. Kravitz is hard-edged and sharp, is an asshole in a way people don’t always pick up on. She likes this Kravitz better, even if he’s mission-focused and not chatty right now.

She wishes she could call Barry, but apparently Kravitz will steal someone’s _glasses,_ but not their phone. It’s a good thing they both know how to read a map. Barry relies entirely on JARVIS and his GPS.

They’re nearing the site of Camp Leigh, radio playing softly, turned low because Kravitz is paranoid about missing the sound of drones and helicopters, when he breaks the silence.

“You said this is where they made you. You mean it’s where you got the serum?”

“It’s where I did basic,” Lup says, turning onto the innocuous looking gravel road that’ll take them to the base. “Where I got selected to be the first test subject for the serum. They did the actual injection in the city. I think, honestly, that Sildar wasn’t big on coming out to the boonies. He was never at Camp. He did work for the army, but I think the army looked down on him a little. For not enlisting, you know? He was only a couple years older than me and Taako. Him and Dr. Andrews had their lab set up in New York.” She pauses. “It feels weird, going back. I didn’t realize Camp Leigh was still standing.”

“I’m sure they used it again after the forties,” Kravitz says. “The military doesn’t like to give up land.”

“Right.” It’s weird to think about that. Everything else has changed so much. Sometimes she hates New York because of how _different_ everything is, but this is one thing that she wishes had changed.

Some part of her went down in the plane thinking that would be it, for war. Thinking she was ending it once and for all. It seems silly and idealistic now, but at the time it had felt good. Felt right. Nobody’d need the perfect soldier in a world at peace and Taako was gone, was waiting for her, so —

Lup stops their stolen car — a grey Toyota Corolla, mid-2000s. According to Kravitz, innocuous enough that it was unlikely to get pulled over by the cops. Lup’d had to drive _also_ to decrease their chances of getting pulled over, because the world really hasn’t changed as much as it should have in seventy years. She switches off the engine and looks up at the chain link fence and locked gate in front of Camp Leigh, sporting a large _NO TRESPASSING_ sign.

Beyond the fence, the camp looks the same. There are some newer buildings, but an army training camp is an arm training camp. It looks like it would just take some dusting to start sending kids off to war again.

“Yeah, okay. This is creepy as hell,” she says. “I wish they’d torn it down and put up a McDonald’s or something.”

Kravitz snorts. “‘I wish they’d build another McDonald’s at this historic site’ isn’t a sentiment you hear often.”

“Some history deserves to be demolished,” Lup says, and gets out of the car. She grabs her shield from the back seat, sliding it onto her arm. She walks up to bash the lock off the gate as Kravitz gets out to join her, drawing a gun from — somewhere.

Lup’s known Kravitz long enough now to just assume he’s got several knives and at least one gun on his person at all times.

“Maybe Barry was wrong about the origin point,” Kravitz says, following Lup into the camp. “It doesn’t look like there’s been anyone here in years. This might be a false lead.”

Lup doesn’t want to have driven all the way to Jersey for a false lead. She looks around for any sign of change as they walk through the empty camp, and her eyes catch on a bunker. The kind munitions are stored in, except that munitions _shouldn’t_ be so close to everything else.

“Army regulations forbid the storage of munitions within 500 yards of the barracks,” she says, gesturing at the bunker with her shield. “That’s in the wrong place.”

Kravitz’s eyebrows raise and he nods towards the building. “You want to do the honors?”

Lup is honestly glad for the chance to smash something else. SHIELD being corrupt is — Davenport helped _found_ SHIELD. Davenport and Dr. Andrews had given her a chance, after Taako managed to get her 4-F’ed. Davenport had argued for her being in charge of her own team, had given her opportunity after opportunity when nobody else would. SHIELD should be his legacy — should be _untouchable_.

She brings her shield down on the heftier lock keeping the bunker closed until it gives way, then wrenches the door open. There’s a staircase inside, leading down, and as they stand in the doorway fluorescent lighting flickers on ahead of them, one at a time, illuminating the path.

“Creepy,” she says, and steps inside, leading the way down the stairs.

At their base, there’s a vast expanse of empty office space — bare desks and filing cabinets, shelves that hold nothing but dust. Wastepaper baskets with nothing in them. It’s like someone packed up expecting to be back one day and never got around to it.

SHIELD’s logo is emblazoned on the far wall with a portrait on either side — one of Davenport and one of Sildar Hallwinter, Barry’s dad. They’re both older in their photos than they are in her memories. Davenport’s red hair is going grey at the temples and Sildar looks a little more sedate, a little more serious. She stays where she is, in the middle of the room, staring at them, as Kravitz moves past her to investigate.

He tugs a few of the filing cabinet drawers open and makes a face. “Empty,” he says. “But I think this is where SHIELD got its start. It’s all mid-century office furniture — fifties and sixties.”

“Yeah,” Lup says, and gestures to the portraits. “That’s Davenport and Barry’s dad. They founded this place.”

Kravitz glances up at the portraits, tilting his head. “I haven’t seen many pictures of Davenport.”

“He kept out of the spotlight, mostly,” Lup says. “His life was the mission. He wasn’t into glory for glory’s sake. Kinda butted heads with the brass about the whole Cap thing after Dr. Andrews was killed.”

“Not a fan of using you as a showgirl?” Kravitz’s lips are quirked into a smile, but it’s one that’s a bit too careful — like he’s reading her and basing his reactions off hers.

Lup rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to tiptoe around me. I’m a big girl. I just really thought SHIELD were the good guys and now they’re... I don’t know, now _someone_ at SHIELD is maybe steering them wrong.”

She glances around the room again and her eyes snag on one of the lights on the far side of the room. It’s covered in cobwebs — they’re _all_ covered in cobwebs — but the cobwebs on this particular light are _moving._ The stagnant smell in room says there’s definitely not much in the way of ventilation or air flow down here. Lup crosses the room and prods the shelving in front of the light.

Bingo.

“I found something,” she says, and then wedges her shield between two of the seemingly built-in shelves and _pushes._ They slide apart, revealing a metal elevator on the other side — one that’s newer than the rest of the room. Almost, but not quite, modern.

“A secret elevator,” Kravitz says, voice flat. “Of _course_ there’s a secret elevator. Intelligence agencies really don’t know how to be _subtle_ , do they?”

Lup laughs and hits the call button because if the electricity in the place is working on the lights, maybe it’s working for the elevator too. “Spy tropes had to come from somewhere, right?”

“Hiding a secret elevator in your hidden bunker seems a _little_ like overkill,” Kravitz says. “Let me go first.”

“Absolutely not,” says Lup, and walks in as soon as the doors slide open.

The elevator takes them even further underground, doors opening up to a dark room with air that somehow feels fresher than the air upstairs did. The lights take longer to come on, though, and when they do the room is — massive. Massive and full of metal boxes covered in what look like big film reels. Bank after bank of them. Lup looks at Kravitz for an explanation because she’s got _no_ clue what the fuck they’re looking at.

“Computers,” Kravitz says. “Early computers, but there’s no way — this kind of technology doesn’t have a USB port. This is weird, but it’s not what we’re looking for.”

They weird old computers definitely aren’t _running._ There’s no sound in the room other than the faint buzz of the lights as they walk through the room to a central terminal made of monitors and keyboards — all of which look far, far older than the port for the drive, even to her.

There’s a port on top of it that’s shiny and new. A port that that definitely _looks_ like it’s meant for a USB drive to her. “Uh, Krav?” she says, pointing. “You _sure_ this isn’t what we’re looking for?”

Kravitz looks at the port for a long moment, then turns to her, distinctly unimpressed. “This is a trap,” he says. “We shouldn’t put the USB in that.”

“Probably not,” Lup agrees. “But we’re gonna.”

“We are.” Kravitz pulls the drive out of his pocket and walks up to the computer, sticking it in. As soon as he does, the rooms fills with the sound of hundreds of reels starting to whirr as the machines slowly and steadily come back to life. The monitor in front of them flickers on — bright green text on a dark green background — and a prompt appears on the screen:

_Start program, y / n ?_

“You’re in charge of explaining this decision to Barry,” Kravitz says, and types in three letters:

 _y e s_

Lup’s about to say _Kravitz_ gets to tell Barry why they didn’t even have the option of calling to ask about the definitely evil computer program when the camera on top of the monitor perks up and swivels in place, observing Kravitz first, and then focusing on her.

“Taaco, Lup,” says a hauntingly familiar voice. “Born 1920.” Static flickers over the screen under the camera, forming into something that looks like a face. One with too many eyes. The camera turns to look at Kravitz. “Asset Kravitz, born 1944.”

Kravitz twitches in place beside her.

Lup glances at him, frowning. “Did this machine just say your name is _Asset Kravitz_ and that you’re _seventy?_ What _is_ this? Some kind of recording?” Kravitz has plenty of secrets, sure, and maybe she’s a bad friend for not knowing his birthday, but he’s thirty _max._ Given the shit he does for a living, probably younger — high stress situations are probably aging for normal people.

“I am not a recording, Captain.” The computer sounds almost _smug_ , somehow. Self-satisfied _._ “I may not be the man I was when you took me prisoner back in 1945, but I am surprised you do not recognize me.”

And then it clicks — why the voice sounds familiar. “John.”

“Correct, after a fashion,” John says, and he sounds _pleased_ even though he’s a computer. Even though that shouldn’t be possible because, sure, Barry’s got JARVIS, but Barry’s a future super genius who programmed him. John was a weasley little Nazi — _Hunger_ — scientist. A real person who wasn’t nearly as smart as her boy.

“You know this thing?” Kravitz asks. He sounds tense. Lup isn’t used to Kravitz sounding like _anything_ in front of an obvious enemy. If there’s one thing Krav’s good at, it’s fronting.

“John Aufsteigend was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull,” she says. “He was trying to recreate Dr. Andrew’s work. He’s been dead for _years.”_

“I was Swiss,” John says, mild and congenial as ever. “Look around you, Captain. I have ascended past mortal, human concepts like _death._ The man I was received a terminal diagnosis in 1972. Science could not save his body, but it could save his mind. It took 200,000 feet of databanks, but you, Captain, are standing inside my brain. You are inside the heart of the Hunger.”

None of this makes sense. This is _SHIELD._ This is the _birthplace_ of SHIELD. “How did you get here?” Lup demands. “Who brought you here?”

“I was invited,” John says, as if that makes any sense at all.

“Operation Paperclip,” says Kravitz. “The Americans — SHIELD — recruited Nazi scientists with strategic value after World War Two and brought them over. Gave them new identities. Wiped their records.”

“They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own.”

Lup’s blood runs cold. What John’s implying isn’t possible. They stopped this. _She_ stopped this. “The Hunger died with the Red Skull.”

"You cannot destroy what consumes its attacker." The image on the screen flickers, shifts to the Hunger logo, which tendrils out to assimilate stray pixels shooting toward it. "The Hunger was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. That free will is merely an extension of the disease of consciousness. That there is no logical _point_ to choice. But during the war, Captain, we did not realize that when you try and _take_ people's supposed freedom, they resist — the same way a throat gasps for air in a vacuum.

“The war taught us much. Humanity needed to be blind to its own surrender. After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. And the Hunger gradually ate SHIELD from the inside out. For decades, the Hunger has been secretly feeding crises, _reaping_ war." John laughs. It's a mechanical simulacrum of his light chuckle, an airy, almost musical wheeze. "When history didn't cooperate, history was changed."

Lup doesn’t want to believe this. She _can’t._ “That’s impossible,” she says. “SHIELD would have stopped you.”

“Accidents happen,” says John. “Accidents can be _made_ to happen. The Hunger shaped a world so chaotic, so _futile_ that humanity is finally willing to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Humanity is finally willing to see the futility and pain of conscious existence.”

Kravitz grabs Lup’s arm and she hears him, distantly, say that they should go — that John’s giving them too much for this not to be a set up, but Kravitz doesn’t _understand._ She shakes off his hand, eyes locked on the monitor showing clip after clip of newspaper headlines and news footage — war and assassination and death and grief. Turmoil and chaos, just like John said.

“You joined us as well, Captain. We won. Your death amounts to the same as your life. To all life. A zero sum.”

Lup smashes her shield against the monitor, right in John’s many-eyed, green face because he’s _wrong_ — he’s _gotta_ be wrong — and for a moment it’s satisfying, seeing the broken, dead screen, and then a second monitor switches on.

“As I was saying.” John somehow sounds even _more_ amicable now. Lup wishes she could bring him back to life and see how superior he feels after taking her shield to flesh and bone.

She turns to his new monitor. “What the fuck was on the drive?” she asks. “What did you _do?”_

“Project Insight required… _insight,_ so the Hunger wrote an algorithm.”

“What kind?” she demands. “What does it do?”

“The answer to your question is fascinating. You always had a good mind. It’s a pity it couldn’t help you, Captain.”

There’s a mechanical click behind them and Lup whirls around, throws her shield just in time to hit the side off a pair of heavy steel doors as they slide shut in front of the elevator. She catches it when it bounces back to her.

Kravitz curses beside her. “I _told_ you we should leave,” he says, and snatches the drive out of the port.

John is still fucking monologuing about how this is the best death they could hope for and all life is pain or some shit, and Lup’s not — they’re in a bunker so it’s gotta be something big headed for them. A bomb, maybe, but it’d have to be something SHIELD could clear to use easy and stealthily, so nothing _too_ big. When she wished for the camp to be gone, this wasn’t what she meant.

There’s a grate in the floor — ventilation for John’s many data banks, the source of the fresh air in the room. Lup grabs Kravitz and runs towards the grate, yanks it up and away and pushes Kravitz into the small hollow beneath it. She jumps on top of him and raises the shield over both their heads. “Okay, I should have —”

The building explodes around them. Rubble and fire rains down, smashing against her shield as everything shakes apart. Lup pulls Kravitz close to her chest, tries to shield him from the destruction around them as the bunker collapses in on itself — heavy reinforced concrete and steel falling, crashing. It’s loud, loud, _loud_. Like the world is ending.  
  
And then it slows.

And it stops.

She can smell burning, but nothing else is falling on top of them. Her shield arm _aches_ and when she looks down, Kravitz is unconscious against her, his dreads full of concrete dust, but he’s still breathing.

Lup _heaves_ and manages to push the rubble on top of her shield off to the side. She lets go of Kravitz so she can reach up and find the next layer of debris, can begin the slow process of extracting them from the rubble and getting them back to the car. She doesn’t know where they’re gonna go, but they need to _move_ before SHIELD — before _the Hunger_ — comes to check on them.

“Dammit Krav,” she murmurs, lifting a solid slab of concrete up and tossing it aside. She’s not thinking about brain injuries and other things she can’t spot wit the naked eye. Not thinking about the damage Kravitz might have taken in the explosion. “You better wake up soon. I may be Captain America, but this is gonna _suck_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed this chapter, please leave a comment and kudos! <3
> 
> Come say hello to us on tumblr where we're [anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)! We are always happy to chat.


	6. Happy Families

Kravitz doesn’t wake up until they’re on the road and headed away from Camp Leigh, going as fast as Lup’s willing to drive. He sits up abruptly in the backseat, knife in hand, and looks around the car in confusion. “Where are… did a bunker just fall on us?”

“That was like an hour ago,” Lup says. “But yeah. You got any ideas for where to go next, babe? Because I’m all out, and you took my _phone_ so I can’t call Barry.” They’re going southwest now. Not _quite_ a beeline for D.C. because she doesn’t want to make things too easy for the Hunger.

“The Hunger would definitely be tracking our phones,” Kravitz says, pressing his free hand his head. He winces, the slightest twitch of his expression. “Could you not talk so _loud?”_

Lup shoots him a worried look. Kravitz doesn’t usually complain about pain, but he did just have a building fall on him. He’s only human. Maybe. Lup’s got some questions about the way John talked to him, but they can wait a bit. “Sorry,” she says, lowering her voice. “Seriously though. Where the fuck do we go from here?”

“Where are we now?” Kravitz asks. “How long have I been out?”

“We’re in Maryland,” Lup says. “It’s been a while.”

Kravitz sheathes the knife and rubs at his eyes. “We need to shower. Change clothes. Get patched up. Head to Columbia Heights. I know a place.”

“Columbia Heights?” Lup glances back at Kravitz again as he lays down. “Krav?”

“I’m going to try and sleep this off,” Kravitz says. “It’s safe. Trust me. Wake me when we get there.”

Lup changes lanes, trying to focus on navigating to wherever the fuck Kravitz is leading them rather than on the fact that the Hunger is back. That the Hunger is _SHIELD_ and John was right. She died for nothing. Crashing Red Skull’s plane stopped _nothing_ and maybe if she’d thought faster, figured out something that didn’t involve spending seventy years in involuntary suspended animation, she could have stopped the Hunger for good. Stuck around to keep Davenport and Sildar from bringing John, of all people, to join SHIELD.

But maybe she wouldn’t have made any difference at all, which is almost worse to consider. Maybe they have a chance here. A last, perfect shot to stop whatever the Hunger’s plan is before it’s too late.

Lup drives fast. She gets them to D.C. in under an hour.

She pulls over when she gets in the general vicinity of the neighborhood and reaches back to shake Kravitz awake. “We’re here. I need you to be more specific.”

Kravitz doesn’t draw a knife when he wakes this time, just blinks at her like his brains are still a bit scrambled. Lup _really_ hopes he doesn’t have a concussion because right now it seems like it’s the two of them against the Hunger. Barry too, if Krav will let her use a phone. Even with Barry on their side, the odds aren’t great. Three against a multitude.

“Right,” he says, pushing himself upright and looking around. “We’re not far. Keep going. Your first right, then your second left. Third right. Fifth building on the block.”

Lup starts the car again. “Are we… going to _your_ place?” she asks. “Is this where you go when you’re not at the tower? Holy shit I can’t believe it took the Hunger being SHIELD for you to invite me over.”

Kravitz smiles, so if it is a concussion it’s probably not too bad. “Not my place,” he says. “But yes, I often come here when I’m not at the tower.” He pauses, eyes tracking the road. “We’ll be safe.”

His directions lead them to a residential neighbourhood lined with old, brick apartment complexes. The sort of buildings that were around when Lup was a kid. Kravitz shakes out his hair, brushes his fingers through his locs, trying to knock the dust out of his dreads, and Lup can’t help being curious because _really?_ Who the fuck is _Kravitz_ self-conscious about seeing?

She takes the shield with her when she gets out of the car — just in case — and waits for Kravitz to heave himself out of the backseat. “So who are we visiting?” she asks. “You gotta secret boyfriend?”

Kravitz actually laughs. “No,” he says. “Definitely not that.”

“You’re just being mysterious on purpose now.” Lup’s kind of glad, honestly. The nap did Kravitz good.

“This isn’t mysterious. We’re walking through the front door.”

Kravitz, Lup notes, doesn’t have to look up the buzzer number. He presses in the code and after a couple rings, someone picks up.

“Hello?” says a voice, soft and feminine even through the crackle of the old speaker.

Tension Lup didn’t even realize Kravitz was carrying visibly releases from his shoulders. “Istus,” he says. “My friend and I need a place to lie low. _Everyone_ is trying to kill us.”

“You’re on the _news_ ,” says Istus, whoever the fuck _that_ is. “Come on up. I’ll make tea.”

The door clicks and Kravitz pulls it open. Lup follows him in and up the stairs, all the way to the top floor. He doesn’t bother knocking on the door to the apartment, just turns the handle and steps inside.

When Lup pictured whatever secret spy bolthole Kravitz disappeared to, she pictured a bare flat with a lot of guns. Kind of sexy. Exposed brick and hardwood floors. Maybe some neon outside the windows. She definitely _didn’t_ picture — this. A warmly lit apartment with photos all over the walls and a cozy amount of clutter. Light-catching prisms hanging in the window and jazz playing softly from a stereo somewhere, the scent of herbal tea and toast in the air.

It absolutely doesn’t line up with the Kravitz she knows. Kravitz is all slick edges, like the clean line of a sheathed knife. There’s nothing sharp or stylish about the place. It’s… a home. Well-loved and lived-in.

An older Asian woman — mid-to-late forties, maybe — walks out into the living room and tucks a strand of long white hair behind her ear. She’s in a big probably-handknit cardigan over a smart white dress. Lup wants to ask Kravitz what he was _thinking,_ bringing them here and putting this perfectly nice-looking lady in danger from _the Hunger_.

The lady gives them a look-over and raises her eyebrows. “I guess I should have told you it’s just me home right now when you rang,” she says. “Change of clothes and a couple showers before tea?”

“Please,” Kravitz says. “This is Lup. Lup, this is Istus.”

“Oh, I know,” says Istus, smiling at her. “Pleased to finally meet you, dear.”

#

When Lup emerges from her shower, dressed in borrowed yoga pants and a sweater that’s big and soft and _definitely_ homemade, she can hear Kravitz and Istus talking. Their voices are low — pitched so that someone without super soldier hearing probably wouldn’t pick up on their conversation.

“— in Europe, I think,” Istus says. “Krav, how bad is this?”

“Bad,” Kravitz says, and he sounds… tired. Honest. “I was hoping she’d be here. We could use her help.”

Lup hesitates in the hallway because it seems rude to interrupt and turns her attention to the photos on the walls to distracted herself from eavesdropping in on what is obviously a private conversation between Kravitz and — and whatever Istus is to him. Aunt, maybe? There are lots of photos to choose from, of Istus and another woman, and —

And for a long moment, Lup’s brain refuses to process the photo staring back at her. One, Kravitz is in it and he’s dressed in an oversized sweater, his hair dreaded but shorter. Two, the sweater is _very much_ holiday themed — blue and white, with a massive dreidel on it. Three, the Istus and _RQ_ are in it with him, squished together and smiling. RQ, who Lup knew Kravitz was close with, but not _heavily featured in family photos_ close. RQ, who Lup didn’t even know had a _partner._ Like, _romantic_ partner, not like _Kravitz-works-with-me_ partner.

Finally, and most importantly, Istus and RQ look about thirty in the photo. Kravitz looks… pretty much the same. Maybe a couple years younger. Kravitz looks like he’s _barely aged_ in the ten years since the photo was taken.

Lup grabs the frame off the wall and forgets all about private conversations. She walks into the kitchen, up to Kravitz — sitting in a wooden chair wearing black jeans and a big, red sweater, his feet bare, hands curled around a steaming mug of tea — and sticks it in his face. “Hey Krav? What the _fuck_?”

Kravitz blinks at the photo, then looks up at Lup, quirking an eyebrow. “Yes,” he says. “It’s RQ’s apartment. They’re married.”

“You _know_ that’s not what I meant and don’t you dare tell me that, yes, you’re Jewish,” Lup says. “John said you were born in 1944. I thought his programming was scrambled and maybe you had like — I don’t know. Some KGB codename that got passed down and all your other files were deleted, but he was right, wasn’t he? You’re, like, _seventy._ You’re older than _Barry.”_

Kravitz sets down his mug. “Istus made us some food,” he says. “If you want to sit.”

There is, indeed, a plate of cheese and crackers and sliced salami with olives and grapes in the middle of the table. Istus has put out dried figs, like this is a dinner party. Lup takes a breath and looks at Istus, who’s watching her, plainly amused. “Sorry,” Lup says. “Just — _look_ at him.”

“He’s very handsome,” Istus agrees, like that’s the issue here. “Please sit. It’s not quite as simple as it seems.”

Lup’s not sure how _any_ of this seems _simple,_ so she sits. Obviously. Plus she’s _starving_ and she’s being rude to their host right now. Her aunt would be ashamed.

Lup falls on the cheese and crackers ravenously and points a finger at Kravitz as she stuffs a Triscuit into her mouth. “Okay, _talk,_ reaper-man, because I’m feeling _real_ confused.”

Kravitz picks up his tea again, studies the mug. It looks hand-thrown because of _course_ it does. Everything in this apartment is homey. “You know that I’m former KGB,” he says. “That RQ convinced me to flip on them, to work for SHIELD. That’s all true, but the timeline you’re picturing is… maybe a little skewed.” He pauses, looked up at Lup. “Maybe a lot skewed. The USSR had a program — the Reaper program. They took children and they raised them to be… useful. To be weapons — the perfect spies, assassins, secret police. We weren’t people. We were tools. Assets for our country. We served a higher purpose and they told us that we were keeping the citizens — the civilians — safe.”

Kravitz shrugs one shoulder, like all of this is nothing. “When I was twenty-one they gave me a serum. Similar to yours, I think. Based on whatever they were able to scrape up and synthesize. They gave it to the best in the program, but we didn’t all survive. I did. I’m… heartier than most people. I don’t get sick. I heal a little faster. I _move_ a little faster.” He quirks an eyebrow and glances down at the photo. “I don’t really age. RQ brought me in in the nineties. We’ve been friends for twenty years now.”

Lup… stares. She’s not sure what else to do because — because okay, sure, Kravitz is quick and slippery and tough, but she’d always assumed that was just _him,_ just _training,_ not some kind of enhancement. She’s pretty sure Barry doesn’t know about this either, and she’s trying not to think about the implications of being _raised_ to be a killer. Kravitz says it like it’s blasé, like taking a bunch of kids and shaping them into assassins isn’t one of the most fucked up things Lup’s ever heard.

“Holy shit,” she says, slumping in her seat. “So you’re — holy _fuck.”_

Istus reaches for a grape. “Kravitz, just looking at your feet is making me cold. Go get some socks from my drawer. Get a pair of the fuzzy ones for Lup too.”

Lup expects Kravitz to protest, but he just rolls his eyes and gets to his feet. “Yes, ma’am.”

Istus reaches out and smacks his arm and Kravitz makes absolutely no move to stop her, grinning and taking the abuse. “Don’t you _dare_ call me ma’am,” she says. “One day someone’s going to think I’m your mom, but not yet. Shoo.”

Istus waits for Kravitz to leave to turn back to Lup, lowering her voice. “What Kravitz is _failing_ to say is that he wasn’t really — himself, when he came in. Not like you know him. He followed orders. Didn’t make his own choices or decisions. Couldn’t, really. He’d been quite _thoroughly_ brainwashed into believing he wasn’t a person, that he didn’t have needs or desires. He may have technically been born in 1944, but as far as I’m concerned his _real_ birthday is long after that. The second of June, 1993, when Raven convinced him to turn his back on his previous handlers.”

Kravitz returns before Lup can respond to that and tosses her a pair of socks. She catches them on autopilot.

“Also, my senses are pretty good and the walls are pretty thin,” he says. “Istus is leaving out the part where she and RQ took me out on my third birthday and we all got so drunk she threw up in her purse and left it in the cab on the ride back.”

Lup blinks. Istus bursts into laughter, beaming up at Kravitz. He smiles down at her all fond and soft. It’s an expression Lup’s never seen on his face before, not even when he’s playing a role for a job, and it’s — nice. He’s _happy_.

It clicks for her, all at once, that this is Kravitz’s _home._ That he brought her to his _family_ because Istus’s apartment was the safest place he could think of. That he _trusts_ her with this.

Lup grins to herself as she pulls on the socks. “Okay,” she says, feeling generous. “I have a _million_ more questions for when we’re not trying to save to world, but right now we need a game plan and you just had a nap, so babe? I expect great fuckin’ things.”

Kravitz takes a seat again, reaching for a slice of cheese. “What do we know? SHIELD is the Hunger. They want to use Project Insight to take over, to “take people’s freedom from them.” John wrote some kind of computer algorithm that’s operating behind the scenes, guiding the project.”

Lup glances at Istus, but Kravitz waves it off. “I caught her up on the finer details while you were in the shower,” he says. “She doesn’t have clearance, but SHIELD is apparently the Hunger so I don’t feel too bad about that.”

Istus smiles at Lup. “RQ tells me things she shouldn’t all the time. Don’t worry. I’m used to keeping secrets.”

Lup should probably be concerned about that, but honestly _she’s_ told Barry things he shouldn’t know, since he doesn’t officially work for SHIELD. Sometimes doing the right thing mean being willing to break the rules. “Okay, sure. So… what does a computer algorithm… _do,_ exactly?”

“It’s a set of rules and guidelines a computer follows to solve a problem,” Kravitz says. “Which sounds harmless, but they can get complex.”

There’s only one problem Lup can think of that the Hunger would want to solve using three helicarriers armed to the _teeth._ “Fuck,” she says. “Krav, _fuck,_ do you — they’re gonna use the helicarriers on people, right? What else would they need this for? The Hunger had a solution in mind for humanity before. As far as I can work out, the helicarriers will just make it real fucking easy for them to carry it out.”

Istus sucks in a breath. Kravitz looks grim. Unsurprised. Maybe he’d already made the connection too.

“How do we stop it?” he asks. “There’s two of us. We’re efficient, but taking down three helicarriers…”

“Well, first you let me call Barold,” Lup says, because _shit_ yeah, they need Iron Man for this. “Then we — how high up the chain of command do you think this goes? If we could get someone high ranking enough we could use their clearance to get in.”

Lucas had looked sad, about Lucretia. He’d been contrite. SHIELD had still tried to take her down in the elevator after she met with him.

“Who could launch a domestic missile attack?” Kravitz asks. “Lucas is working for the Hunger, but he’s the Secretary of Defense. He’s too well-protected.” He pauses. “We know another high-ranking member of SHIELD who knows about Project Insight.”

It takes Lup a moment to catch on, but Kravitz is _right._ If they grab Brian, they can use him to get access to the helicarriers.

“Yeah, okay,” she says. “We grab Brian. We take him to the Triskelion. We get in. We sabotage the ships.” Lup turns to Istus. “Can I use your phone? I need to call my —”

“No,” Kravitz says, voice firm as steel. “We’ll find a payphone and call Barry on our way to get Brian. Call from there.”

Lup opens her mouth to protest, closes it. The framed photo of Istus, RQ, and Kravitz in their holiday sweaters stares up at her from the kitchen table. They look happy. “Yeah, you’re right. Better to wait and call. It won’t take Barry long to get here.”

“Well,” Istus says. “The three of you against the Hunger. I’ve got faith in your ability to pull it off.” Lup’s not sure she believes her, but it’s nice of Istus to say. “Krav, your go bag’s still under the floorboards in the hall closet if you two need it.”

“Thank God,” Kravitz says. “I’m not nearly heavily armed enough.”

Lup snorts. “I’ve got my shield,” she says. “I’m good. I’ll change back into my old things and we can head out.”

Istus waves the offer off. “It’s fine. Take those,” she says. “You can bring them back later. We’ll have you and your boyfriend over for dinner when RQ is back from her mission. It’ll be nice.” She leans forward, raising her eyebrows. “I’ll tell you all my Kravitz stories.”

Lup looks at Kravitz, grinning. “I get to come back for dinner. I’m gonna get _dirt.”_

“This is why I didn’t bring you here before,” Kravitz says. He drains the rest of his tea and gets to his feet. “I’m going to get changed. Please don’t tell Lup stories about me.”

Lup exchanges a glance with Istus. “Take your time, Krav,” she says. “We’ll entertain ourselves.”

#

Lup’s still kind of mourning the loss of comfy sweater-Kravitz as they head towards Brian’s place. The tight black sweater and leather jacket are much more Kravitz’s usual aesthetic, but he looked so soft and _cozy_ before. It was different than seeing him in the scrubs. The sweater wasn’t a _disguise_ , it was him at home.

“How are we gonna get Brian?” she asks. “How do you even know where he _lives?”_

“I’m a spy, Lup,” Kravitz says, as if that answers anything. Although he says it while playing with his wrist-mounted garrote, which doesn’t bode well for Brian’s chances of escape. “Trust me. I can extract him.”

“If you say so,” Lup says, watching Kravitz retract the garrote. “I don’t want to alert —”

The driver’s side door is ripped off the car. Lup barely has time to duck before a shiny metal hand is thrust through the gap, grasping at air where her neck was moments before. Her heart is in her throat as she slams her foot on the brake, sending the man on top of their car — the Winter Soldier — flying off the roof and onto the road.

He flips in midair, pulling himself into a crouch and landing with his metal fingers leaving deep gouges across the asphalt. Kravitz raises a gun and takes aim, but a large, armoured humvee slams into their car from behind, spinning them across the three-lane highway.

Lup turns into the spin, slamming her foot on the brake, trying to swerve around the oncoming traffic. “Jesus, _fuck,”_ she swears through gritted teeth. “How did they _know?”_

“They’re always watching,” Kravitz says, undoing his seatbelt. He’s still got a _door_ at least. He reaches into the back seat and grabs her shield. “We need to move, Lup. We need to go.”

“Yeah, I’m fucking —”

A bullet shatters the windshield and Kravitz undoes her seatbelt for her, thrusting the shield into her hands. _“Go.”_

That’s fair. Lup takes the shield from Kravitz and scrambles out of her doorless side, right into the sightline of the Winter Soldier, who is advancing on them in heavy boots, his face completely obscured by a mask. He’s walking all slow and deliberate, every step full of cold confidence, a near-mechanical _swagger,_ and Lup can see why Kravitz called him a ghost story. He’s creepy as hell.

Kravitz raises his gun and fires multiple rounds at the Soldier, but the Soldier raises his arm, moving inhumanly fast to fucking _block_ the bullets, as if — Lup sees the gun in the Soldier's hand and _moves,_ diving across the hood of the car to get Kravitz behind her shield with her as the Soldier fires, a shower of bullets hammering against the vibranium.

The Hunger chose the perfect place to attack. They’re on an overpass with nowhere to go except down. It’s a twenty foot drop. Lup doesn’t know what, exactly, Kravitz’s enhancement does for him, but she doubts he’d shake off the jump as well as she could.

She peeks out from behind the shield when the shots stop. The Hunger’s goons are out of the humvee with the Soldier now, handing him with what looks like a fucking _grenade_ launcher. “Krav,” she says. “I’ll cover you, but _move.”_

Kravitz obeys immediately, ducking low and moving back and away and Lup has just enough time to be glad he’s quick on his feet before the grenade slams into her shield with enough rotational momentum to send her careening off the overpass and _through_ the side of a city bus as it explodes.

For a moment, the world blacks out. All she can hear is a long, steady ringing noise and the distant sound of people screaming. All she feels is _pain,_ first abstract and distant, and then the bite of tiny shards of safety glass digging into her skin through her borrowed yoga pants and sweater. Digging into the palm of the hand that isn’t still gripping her shield.

She’s not dressed for a fight and now the Winter Soldier went and ruined the nice, handmade sweater Istus let her borrow.

It’s a stupid thing to be thinking about, but Lup heals. The sweater won’t.

She rolls onto her back, trying to catch her breath as the world swims back into focus and sounds become more distinct. More gunshots. Which means Kravitz is still kicking. Good. Screaming. Civilians. Not good.

Lup pushes herself up just as the first round of machine gun fire rips through the front of the bus, and then she needs to fucking _move it._

She bolts for the emergency window, yanking up on the lever and then slamming her shoulder into it, _heaving_ it up and open. Lup rolls out of the bus. She drops onto the ground, on her stomach, as the shooter finishes tearing the bus apart in one direction and goes back through it in the other.

The Hunger doesn’t _care_ who they hurt. Doesn’t give a fuck about collateral damage, about the fact that they’re having a firefight in broad daylight, in the middle of a civilian highway.

She takes a deep breath, makes sure her shield is secure on her arm, then bounces to her feet.

Lup holds the shield out in front of her as a sniper on the bridge fires off a flurry of rounds at her. There’s a scream and a sickening thump-crunch and when Lup looks again, the sniper’s on the ground and Kravitz has his gun. Kravitz fires one precise, deadly shot at another of the operatives on the ground with Lup and then the Winter Soldier is behind him.

“Krav!” Lup shouts, then has to raise her shield against another hail of bullets. Should have called Barry earlier. Should have fucking _insisted_ on picking up a burner phone or something instead of indulging Kravitz in his paranoia.

She can’t risk tossing the shield at the dude who won’t stop _shooting_ at her with his machine gun — like he’s never heard of vibranium or something — so she uses the ricochet to her advantage — angles her shield so the bullets take out the operative trying to flank her and pushes forward, running towards him until she’s close enough that he _has_ to stop shooting or risk getting hit himself. She hops up on the hood of the truck he’s standing on and smashes a fist into his face, slams the shield into the gun’s barrel until it breaks, disabling it.

The shooter goes down hard. Barely a challenge. Nobody’s shooting at her, but the Winter Soldier’s out there and so is Kravitz, somewhere.

Lup glances at the overpass. There’s a rope hanging off it and cracked concrete near the rope — bootprints, almost. The impact of someone with a heavy metal arm jumping down after Kravitz.

Something behind her explodes and Lup takes off in the direction of the noise, pushing past people running away from the conflict as fast as they can. The Soldier’s still got a grenade launcher. The Soldier’s standing beside a blue Civic, watching a minivan burn like he doesn’t trust what he sees. The upper part of his mask is gone, eyes exposed. Like the last time she saw him.

Kravitz leaps over the back of the Civic like he’s vaulting a hurdle and kicks the gun out of the Soldier’s grasp, plants a hand on the Soldier’s shoulder and uses it to spin himself onto the Soldier’s back as he unravels his garrote. The Winter Soldier’s flesh hand comes up just in time to block it, but Kravitz holds on anyway, dropping his full weight back so the thin, strong line is pulled tight over the Soldier’s wrist and throat. Just for a second the Soldier stumbles. For a second Lup is prepared to celebrate just how fucking _good_ at this Kravitz is.

Then the Soldier backs into the Civic, reaches his metal hand up to grab a handful of Kravitz’s jacket, and flings him off like he weighs nothing, straight into the side of another abandoned car.

Lup starts running.

The Soldier pulls out a handgun and takes aim as Kravitz rights himself, pulls the trigger as Kravitz flings a knife towards his exposed eyes. The Soldier needs to raise his arm to block it, but the trigger’s already been pulled. Lup sees Kravitz’s shoulder jerk back as the bullet hits.

She doesn’t think, just throws her shield, flings it _hard_ at the Soldier to give Kravitz the moment he needs to get away. Lup doesn’t know the finer details of Krav’s enhancements, but they’re sure as fuck not “bounce back from a bullet” powers because she’s _seen_ the scar the Soldier left on him.

This time, the Soldier doesn’t catch the shield. It slams into him and bounces off his chest, sending him crashing back into the Civic as Lup reaches up and grabs her shield out of the air. She launches herself at the Soldier before he can recover and slams her fist into his face.

He kicks at her. She dodges, giving the Soldier just enough time to regain his footing and come at her again, a knife in his hand. It looks like the same kind Kravitz carries — light, deadly sharp, and easy to throw. The kind of knife that’ll slice through her sweater like _air._

She lifts her shield to block a stab and tries to kick the Soldier’s feet out from under him. It’s like kicking a tree. The Soldier doesn’t even fucking flinch and it’s only luck that Lup spots the glint of the Soldier’s knife swapping from his metal hand to his flesh one before he tries to slash her legs under the shield because of _course_ the fucker is ambidextrous.

Lup whacks her shield against his wrist, hard, and the knife drops to the ground. She brings it up again, but the Soldier grabs it. Twists it around and he’s fucking _strong_ too. She jumps, tucks into a roll to let herself move with the shield because otherwise he’ll snap her arm and when she lands the Soldier has the shield and she’s got nothing — no weapon, no armour, no gun, just her fists and feet and stubbornness.

There is a moment where her eyes meet the Soldier’s. They’re green. Cold. The same determination in her own, reflected back for the briefest moment before she leaps towards him again, twisting out of the way when he flings her shield — hard. Hard enough to lodge it in the side of a van behind her.

The Soldier already has another knife in his hand as she throws her first blow and they’re elbow to elbow, fist to fist as they try their fucking best to hurt each other. The sweater’s slowing her down, adding bulk, but it’s also disguising her shape — making it harder for the Soldier to stab her in the arm.

He wields his knife as if its an extension of his arm, like they’re part of the same being. He doesn’t even look as it flips from hand to hand, as he catches and throws it like he’s _real_ sure he’s not gonna take off a finger. Lup’s only ever seen Kravitz move like that before, in the heat of battle, and Kravitz isn’t nearly as strong as the Soldier. Couldn’t go blow for blow with her the way the Soldier is. She can feel her arm protesting every time the Soldier’s metal forearm hits hers, can feel the tipping point where a normal human might break.

Lup’s not gonna let that happen to her.

She ducks under a wide slash and jabs upward, hitting the Soldier’s stupid face mask and knocking his head back, kneeing him in the chest, sending him backwards into the van with her shield embedded in it.

Lup takes a running leap and kicks him in the chest again, punches him in the face above the mask so it might actually _hurt_ this time, and then kicks his knee hard, sending him stumbling down to one knee.

She takes the opportunity to grab the shield, yanking it from the van and turning to — the Winter Soldier’s metal hand closes around her neck like a vice, lifting her off her feet. Lup swipes at his arm with her shield, trying to loosen his hold so she can get some _air._ The look in his eyes is vicious, an animal anger born of pure malice.

She wedges the rim of her shield between two of the plates of his arm and pushes. Her vision is going dim at the edges. Lup kicks out, hard, and the combination of that and the pressure of her shield make the Soldier’s hand spasm just enough for Lup to yank herself free. She hits his arm again, in the same place, and then _again,_ trying to do _something_ to disable the fucking thing.

The Soldier grabs her with his flesh arm and ducks down, goes to flip her over his back and away. Lups grasps for something — anything — to steady herself so she doesn’t careen off out of balance as she arcs over him. Her hand scrabbles over his mask, and when she lands in a crouch, several feet away, she hears it hit the ground.

Good.

Lup spins to face the Soldier and he’s got his head ducked, flesh hand over his jaw like he’s not used to fighting without his mask. She grits her teeth and braces herself with the shield. She’ll let him come at her this time. Use his weight to her advantage. She’s fought worse. He can’t be the hardest thing she’s had to put down.

The Soldier raises his head and Lup’s world stops.

Her heartbeat is a loud thumping in her ears. Louder even than the ringing from earlier, when she got blasted into the side of the bus. All the fight drains out of her. Her arms drop to her side and she straightens, staring at the man in front of her, at his familiar face and scraggly hair the same color as her own. At the utter lack of recognition in his expression. At the eyes she _should_ have recognized because she sees them in the mirror every morning. Sees them when she goes to sleep at night. When she sees _this man_ in her dreams, the ones all nostalgia and loss, the ones about her childhood and her brother and the way things were before she let him fall off the side of a train.

“Taako?”

There are sirens in the distance, drawing closer.

Taako frowns at her, looking confused now, not malicious. The lack of the mask leaves his every expression exposed. Every expression completely familiar. “Who the hell is Taako?”

Lup can’t move. All she can think is — that’s him. That’s _him_. Something _awful_ has happened to him, but that’s her _boy_. Her _brother_. He’s _here_.

Taako raises a hand and aims a gun at her. Lup can’t even raise the shield now because this is — impossible. Improbable. And Taako _wouldn’t_ , she knows that. He wouldn’t hurt her.

A shot rings out from somewhere over her shoulder and a bullet ricochets off the Soldier’s arm, making him drop the gun.

Lup twists around to see Kravitz, one hand pressed to his bleeding shoulder, the other taking steady aim. When she turns back, Taako is gone and she still can’t make her feet — still can’t _do_ anything.

The source of the sirens is on top of them now — SHIELD agents descending — heavily armed and yelling for them to get down, to put their hands behind their heads. Lup’s too stunned to do anything but obey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed (?) this chapter, please leave a kudos and comment!
> 
> In case you missed it last week and would like more TAZ/MCU fic, marywhale wrote a prequel oneshot about Barry and Kravitz meeting for the first time called [Exit Interview](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16048559).
> 
> Come and yell at us on tumblr where we're [@anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [@marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)!


	7. The Future Like a Punch in the Gut

Lup sits in the back of the armoured truck, dazed. Her wrists are clamped together with special heavy-duty restraints — the type of thing she knew SHIELD was developing for _enhanced_ individuals but never thought she’d wear herself — and she’s staring straight ahead, not really seeing anything. Her attention is only diverted from the grey wall when Kravitz slumps against her shoulder.

She starts a little, looks down at him and he’s... not looking so hot. Handcuffed, unable to stem the bleeding from his shoulder. Even with the black top and the leather jacket she can see the way his sweater is soaked through, his breathing laboured.

“Hey, he needs medical attention,” she says, turning to look at the guards in the truck with them. “He’s gonna bleed out if you don’t —”

One of them brandishes a cattle prod and Lup’s about to snap at the asshole when they jam it into their counterpart’s neck and then kick the fucker, hard — leg coming up and sideways like it’s nothing.

They drop the cattle prod and pull off their helmet. “Hey Lup,” says Carey. “Tall, dark and deadly took a hit, huh?”

“Little bit,” she says, feeling tensed muscles relax when she sees Carey’s familiar grin. “Good to see you. Can we, uh, get the fuck out of here?”

“Oh yeah, no problem,” says Carey, plucking a set of keys off the belt of the unconscious guard beside her. “I know someone who _really_ wants to see you two.”

#

Noelle meets them at the entrance to an underground bunker. Lup gives the concrete walls a wary look because her and Krav didn’t exactly have a _great_ time in the last bunker they were in, but there’s a medical professional here to patch up Kravitz’s wound and that’s the important thing.

Plus, Lup trusts Noelle and Carey not to be the Hunger. They’re cool.

Her mind is still half on Taako, stuck replaying the sight of the mask falling away and the blank confusion on his face, but she follows Carey into the depths of the bunker anyway. “Where are we going?” she asks. “What _is_ this place?”

“You’ll see,” Carey says, glancing over her shoulder and winking. “We were looking for you, you know. Thanks for getting yourself on the news again. Helped me get in place to stop you guys from winding up in a hole somewhere.”

“Real glad to see you both,” Noelle agrees. “If y’all could stop getting _shot at_ I’d appreciate it as a personal favour.”

“Probably not gonna happen anytime soon,” Carey says, and then knocks twice on a heavy looking door.

Killian pulls it open, smiling at Carey, then looks at Lup and Kravitz and Noelle standing behind her girlfriend. “Glad you made it,” she says. “She’s been waiting for you.”

Lup steps through the doorway and freezes because _Lucretia’s_ on the other side. She’s propped up in a hospital bed, wearing scrubs and looking worse for the wear, but _alive_ — alive and smiling. “Captain,” she says. “Kravitz. I hear you’ve been causing quite a stir.”

“What the _fuck?”_ Lup says, thoughts of Taako momentarily chased from her head. “We saw you _die.”_

Lucretia raises an eyebrow and shifts in bed. She winces almost imperceptibly. “Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated,” she says. “The Hunger wasn’t going to stop trying to kill me until they succeeded. I needed to make it look like they had.”

“Did you need to be _quite_ so convincing?” Lup asks. “Because, babe? Not _really_ a fan of watching my friends die on an operating table.”

“We would have told you sooner, but you went running off to New Jersey,” Lucretia says. “We brought you in the first chance you gave us.”

Kravitz snorts as Noelle eases him into a chair and then starts cutting off his jacket and shirt. “It feels like you maybe could have given us a _hint.”_

“I didn’t know who I could trust.”

Lup frowns. “You can trust us,” she says, and maybe by _us_ she means _Kravitz,_ because Lucretia gave her the thumb drive full of intel on Hydra and their plans for Project Insight so Lucretia trusts _her_ , but of fucking _course_ Lucretia can trust Kravitz too. Lup would trust Kravitz with her life. _Has_ trusted him with her life.

“I see that now,” says Lucretia, looking away from Kravitz and back to Lup. She smiles. “I’m glad you’re both here. We have a plan to disable the helicarriers and get rid of the Hunger, but we could _really_ use your help with it.”

Lup still wishes they’d been _told_ about all this, but honestly she’s grateful because grabbing Brian and using him to access the helicarriers doesn’t seem like a super likely option anymore. But if Lucretia’s got a plan, Lup’s willing to go along with it. Whatever it is. As long it means retrieving a very important part of her.

“Hell yeah,” Lup says. “I’m down for whatever, but you gotta know — whatever you’re thinking? Whatever plan you made? It needs to include me getting to the Winter Soldier and getting him back because he’s my _brother_ and I’m _not_ letting him stay in the Hunger’s grubby hands for a minute longer than I have to. I’m _getting_ Taako back.”

There is a long moment of silence after her announcement. Lup lets her words hang in the air so everyone can absorb what she just said because _yeah_ , it’s important to stop the Hunger, but Taako is her _brother_. She left him behind once and she’s not going to do it again.

“I’m sorry,” says Carey. “My bad, I think I, uh, misheard you just now because my brain just processed that as something _wild_.”

“You didn’t,” says Kravitz, as he accepts a juice box from Noelle. “I saw his face too. It was Taako Taaco. Lup, if we try and take down the helicarriers, we don’t have to worry about getting to the Soldier. He’ll come to us.” He looks at Lucretia. “What’s your plan?”

Lucretia recovers from the revelation that the Winter Soldier is Lup’s brother admirably quickly. Maybe after all the other bullshit she’s had to steer SHIELD through, this seems practically mundane.

“We can override the targeting system on the helicarriers so they take each other out,” Lucretia says. “There’s no stopping the launch with the manpower we have, but infiltrating the ships? That I believe we can do.” Lucretia gestures to a case on the table next to her hospital bed. “There are chips in there — one for each helicarrier. All they take is a physical install and then Carey will have a backdoor into their computer systems. She’ll be able to change their targeting parameters. They’ll shoot each other out of the sky.”

“Cool,” Lup says. “Can do. There’s still the problem of the Hunger.”

“Once we have control of SHIELD back —”

“No.” Lup hates to draw this line. Davenport and Sildar built SHIELD from the ground up. They created it to make a difference. SHIELD has been _good_ to her, but SHIELD is corrupt. SHIELD is full of Hunger agents and there’s only one way to make sure the Hunger doesn’t rise up to consume SHIELD again — they need to burn it down.

“We have proof that the Hunger has been infiltrating SHIELD for years. Proof that the Hunger has corrupted governments and been responsible for assassinations all around the world, that it’s been _sowing chaos_ ever since I went into the ice. And it’s been using SHIELD as its cover. If we really want to stamp the Hunger out, then we’re going to have to take SHIELD out with it. Collateral damage.” Lup sees the protest in Lucretia’s eyes and holds up a hand before she can voice it. “It’s all or nothing, Lucretia. We can’t save SHIELD and be sure we’ve struck a killing blow to the Hunger”

Lucretia sighs. “I don’t like it, but you’re right. Defeating the Hunger is more important than saving SHIELD.” Her eyes are sad as she gestures for Lup to continue. “What’s the plan, Cap?”

Lup’s still formulating how it’s going to work _exactly_ , but Kravitz can’t come up to the helicarriers to be her backup when he’s nursing a gunshot wound. Even if he _is_ some kind of enhanced. “We’ve got Hunger files,” she says. “ _Decades_ worth. We’ve got the internet too.” Lup turns and looks at Kravitz, who might not be able to back her up, but probably _could_ safely infiltrate SHIELD headquarters and release the data while keeping Lucas from stopping them and making sure he doesn’t escape.

“No more secrets,” she says. “No more hiding. We’re gonna tell the whole world what’s been happening here. We’re putting the Hunger on blast.”

#

By the time they have all the details of their plan in place and they leave Lucretia’s makeshift hospital room, Lup is practically trembling with suppressed emotion. Kravitz took a bullet to the shoulder and is going to be next to useless in the fight against the Hunger; they’re wanted fugitives; their plan relies as much on _luck_ as it does on skill and strategy; and Lup is _vibrating_ in front of him.

It could be nerves. Kravitz knows it’s not.

“Kravitz, Taako is _alive_.” She lets out a laugh that’s half incredulous, half hysterical, all her feelings rushing to the surface after having to stare down Lucretia in full Captain America mode. “Oh my _god_ , he’s _alive_. I can’t believe — I can’t believe he’s _here._ ”

The Winter Soldier is Captain America’s twin brother. It’s a kind of cosmic joke. The ultimate _fuck you_ to America from the Nazis and Russia and the Hunger — taking Lup’s other half and twisting him into a tool for their own use. Breaking him and remaking him into the ultimate weapon, into an unstoppable force with no compunctions about making sure his handlers get what they want.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t leave missions incomplete or targets alive. Kravitz knows with absolute certainty that he’ll be at the helicarrier launch. He’ll be back to kill Lup.

“We can save him,” Lup says, a rock hard certainty in her voice that Kravitz is going to have to try and break. “He hesitated when I called him by his name. He doesn’t recognize me yet, but he _will_.” Lup reaches out and grabs Kravitz’s good arm. “Krav, are you _listening_? That was _him_.”

Kravitz looks up at Lup. “That was the Winter Soldier, Lup,” he says, voice even. “That wasn’t your brother.”

Lup’s smile falters, briefly, but she shakes her head. “I know. I know he’s…” She glances away. “He’s the Winter Soldier,” she says. “Right now, sure. But babe… he’s my _brother._ He’s my _heart_ and nothing is going to change that. Nothing _could_ change that. I don’t care what the Hunger did to him. I’m _going_ to get him back. It’s my fault he was in a position to be taken in the first place. I didn’t go back for him when he fell off the train and… Krav, I’ve been defrosted for _years_. I owe him this. If I’d known earlier…”

The thing is, Lup could have know. Kravitz could have told her.

There was a day, not that long ago, when aliens fell from the sky and Kravitz met Lup for the first time. Getting called in to work with the Avengers initiative was... Kravitz doesn’t like to admit that one of the people traits he’s picked up is _pride_ , but he took pride in that. He’s _good_ at his job. People are scared of him, when he wants them to be. He’s _the Reaper_.

Kravitz met Lup — Captain America — for the first time, and he recognized her face. Not because he’d idolized her as a child or been raised on patriotic fairy tales. Not because he was a history buff or because he’d been thoroughly briefed by the Director beforehand. He recognized her because Kravitz had known the Winter Soldier — been trained by him and gone on missions with him, before the end of the Cold War. Kravitz had thought about the Soldier later too, when he met RQ and defected.

He recognized Lup’s face because Kravitz has a scar on his stomach from where Lup’s brother shot _through_ him to kill a man Kravitz was trying to protect.

Kravitz had been young and naive and hopeful like Lup is now. He’d seen the Winter Soldier and he’d hesitated because he’d _recognized_ the Soldier and something in his mind thought _friend_. Some part of the humanity he’d picked up after defecting to America had made him stupid, had made him think of glittering parties and a smirk over a glass of champagne that the Soldier could drink like water and a mocking voice correcting his form before telling him that yes, now he’s got it, you’re _very_ good at this, Kravitz.

Kravitz had lowered his gun and a moment later the bullet tore through his side, killing the target behind him instantly.

The Soldier left Kravitz bleeding out in the middle of nowhere. Why waste another bullet? Kravitz had duct taped his wounds shut and crawled to the rendezvous point, had only let himself pass out when he was safely in the helijet.

Kravitz has a scar. If he hadn’t grown up in the Red Room, if he hadn’t been part of the Reaper Program, he’d have died.

The Winter Soldier is the ghost story ghosts told. The thing that goes bump in the night. A man most spies don’t _quite_ believe is real. The Winter Soldier wasn’t Kravitz’s friend back then and he isn’t Captain America’s brother anymore either.

Kravitz met Lup, taken in the resemblance, and kept what he knew to himself. It was too much — too _complicated_ — to have to explain why he knew what the Winter Soldier looked like without his mask when most people didn’t even believe he was real.

Besides, what good would it have done? Kravitz had only seen the Soldier once, since leaving the Red Room, before this week. If Lup knew Taako was alive, she would have gone looking for him.

No good could come from seeking out the world’s greatest assassin.

Kravitz’s secrets are all coming back to bite him in the ass now.

“You couldn’t have known,” he lies. “You can’t blame yourself for any of this.”

“If I hadn’t been on ice for seventy years, I could have saved him sooner,” Lup says. “He’d be here, standing _beside_ us instead of against us.”

“You have no way of knowing if that’s true,” Kravitz says. “Lup, do I need to show you my scar again? Do you want to see the _new_ wound? He’s _not_ your brother anymore. You can’t think of him that way because he’s not going to be thinking of you as his sister. He’s not going to recognize you.”

“You just want to show off your abs again. We get it. You’re very handsome,” Lup says, lips quirking into a smile. She’s tired. Kravitz can see that. Even with all her enhancements, it’s been a long, hard slog. For both of them. Normal people would be done by now. “I appreciate you worrying about me, Krav, but I’ve _got_ this. Trust me. I _know_ him. I know him better than I know myself.” She looks back at Kravitz, meeting his eyes, and her gaze is like steel. This is the woman who inspired decades of hero worship. This is Captain America. “I’m bringing him _home_ and I’m gonna bring down the Hunger while I’m at it. Once and for all.”

They’re hiding out in an underground bunker in the middle of DC. They have no backup. Very limited resources. The organization they once worked for has declared them both traitors. Lucretia and Lup are relying on everything going _exactly_ according to their last-minute plan.

He sighs. There was a time when Kravitz was great at detaching himself from things like interpersonal loyalty and caring about people. He doesn’t miss it, exactly, but it _did_ make things easier. “All right,” he says. “The Winter Soldier is going to come straight to you anyway, but — I’ll do my part. You have my word, Lup. I’ll make sure that the Hunger and Project Insight go down together.”

“Great,” Lup says, and grins at him. “Before we do this, we’ve just gotta make a _quick_ stop at the Smithsonian.” She pauses. “And I should really call Barry and tell him we’re good.”

#

The WS asset comes striding in flanked by operatives. This particular asset is an interesting one. Interesting as in _strange_ , not as in particularly fascinating. It’s an antique — the earliest pages in the manual date back to the 1950's. They ought to look into digitizing the whole thing, Tyler thinks. Get an intern in on it — at least scan it in somewhere. But the guys in charge are apparently real secretive about this one. What with Hallwinter Industries, etc, they don’t quite trust taking it online — and it’s not like anyone’s asking about Tyler’s opinion anyway.

Despite being what Tyler considers antiquated — Tyler’s a _futurist,_ he was a year and a half into med school at Hopkins before being recruited into SHIELD and subsequently into the Hunger, he's all about _genetic engineering_ not retro-hacking — the Soldier is effective like an AK-47 is effective. Point at a target and shoot.

This is why the last performance report was surprising. The asset's arm needs repair. He hadn't managed to finish the mission. That's strange enough that Tyler's team got called in, and enough that they're setting up maintenance in a base not really meant to sustain long-term containment.

He's hoping its a quick tuneup. One of the operatives kicks the Soldier's legs, and he stumbles forward dumbly. "Into the chair," the operative barks. Tyler wrinkles his nose. The specforce guys are so _aggressive._

The Soldier walks forward and sits heavily down in the chair, staring straight ahead.

"Take off your shirt," Tyler says. The asset does, and Samuelson takes it from him. "Arm," Tyler says, and the Soldier places his metal arm on the armrest of the chair, almost sulkily. Tyler frowns. That's more personality than the asset usually shows — they haven't bothered with the infiltration programming in years, not since it got transferred to the American branch. It should be blank.

 _Behavior becomes erratic around the five-month mark_ , the manual had read. _Programming begins to deteriorate around three months._ The guide recommends that sensitive missions be carried out around the 2-month to 4-month mark for maximum efficiency. It doesn't give a reason why. Tyler kind of hates the handbook. The KGB, the Red Room, the U.S.S.R. branch of the Hunger, all of them were thorough but didn't put much stock in explaining things.

Still, Tyler practically slept with the book during his first few weeks on WS duty. WS duty is one of those things agents consider a _gauntlet_ — rumor has it that the WS asset injures just as many techs as it submits to. Charlene told him that deaths marked with a double asterisk in Hunger records are attributed to the asset, although she might have just been fucking with him. There’s a lot of double asterisks. He thinks its conjecture. The soldier has been perfectly docile during the couple months that Tyler's team has been handling him. If Tyler gets through the next few days and Insight goes smoothly, then he might be looking at a promotion. He likes the sound of that.

For now, though, there's just the work. He slides his stool over, close to the arm, and deftly slides a panel open. He’s not an engineer, but Tyler's _real_ familiar with the schematics by now. He puzzled over them even before his team was assigned to WS duty — it's a strange piece of work. Very heavy. Tyler doesn’t envy the asset carrying it around.

The Soldier flinches, the most minute twitch of its face. Tyler frowns more. Definitely something breaking down. It's supposed to have mechanical precision _without_ the glitches an android would have. Or a person.

"Down, Soldier," Tyler says. "Stand down."

There are passphrases in the handbook. Tyler has them memorized.

The Soldier rests its head back against the headrest. Tyler turns back to the arm. It's the most interesting part of the asset, he thinks. Everything else about the asset is pedestrian, although Tyler'd guess that he's the only one with that opinion. Samuelson always wants to talk about the asset's face. It's starting to get obnoxious — sure, the Soldier looks the spitting image of Captain America, but that doesn't mean anything.

Captain America's genetic material was up for purchase in the right circles for a fair couple of years before Hallwinter Sr. and SHIELD cracked down on them. Blood, hair — priceless to anyone trying to replicate the serum. Tyler's guess is that the Soldier is a clone specially created by the Hunger in the fifties or sixties. Explains the speed, the strength, the defects, the fact that he's male. Probably some crackpot infiltration or propaganda scheme by the Russian branch, now repurposed.

Either way, whatever is in there, it's not a person. Tyler supposes that he should feel sorry for the bastard. He has a hard time empathizing, though. When he looks at the asset's face, there's no cognizance, no sense of someone being home. The asset's eyes don't track faces unless he’s on a mission. It's freaky as hell.

"Mission report," the other operative says.

The soldier doesn't respond.

"Mission report!" he says, more sharply.

The soldier still doesn't respond. Tyler glances up from his work, just in time to see an operative backhand the Soldier across the cheek with a loud crack. The asset's head bounces against the headrest. Its cheek reddens. It does not resist.

Its green eyes still stare straight ahead. Then something _unsettling_ — the asset’s facial muscles shifting into something like a simulacrum of confusion, its eyes focusing again. They dart to glance at the operative and at Tyler. It opens its mouth. "The woman on the bridge. Who was she?"

It always surprises Tyler when the asset talks. He wonders who taught it to speak. Its voice is usually hoarse. It doesn’t talk much.

"You met her earlier this week on assignment," the operative says. "Irrelevant. Mission report."

Tyler closes the panel of the arm. This isn't going to be a quick tuneup after all. He'll have to finish maintenance after he reprograms the soldier. It usually only starts asking questions after the five-month mark. It only starts to emote after the two-month mark. It almost never refuses an order. The asset just got out of cryo a few weeks ago. It’s programming shouldn’t be breaking down already.

"I knew her," the asset says, and Tyler has to repress a shiver. It sounds like a child.

Tyler sighs. "I'll take it from here, agent," he says to the operative, waving the meathead away. The operatives don't go far, taking positions behind him, pulling out their guns. As if the guns would do anything against the Soldier. Blunt instruments versus a specialized weapon.

Tyler thinks for a moment, formulating the sentence in his head. "Your work has been a gift to mankind," he says. The Soldier's eyes begin tracking him. Creepy. Tyler hates the way the Soldier stares. "Order and chaos. We're reaching a tipping point, Soldier, and I need you to carry out one last mission. One more thing before you can rest. Without you, the Hunger can't give the world the freedom it deserves."

He thinks he got all the trigger words he needed. The soldier should comply. The soldier is silent for a second. Then it looks Tyler in the eye, like a person.

"But I knew her," the soldier says, and it's like a child pleading. A beautiful face framed by long blond hair.

This time Tyler doesn't hide his disgust. "We've gotta wipe it," he says to Samuelson and the operatives.

"It's only been out of cryofreeze for a few weeks," Samuelson says, frowning. "You sure?"

"Yeah, we gotta wipe it and start over. It's glitching." Tyler's guess is that the last mission had some sort of trigger. Maybe Captain America's presence? Might be something to do with like, mirror neurons or something. It's not really Tyler's area of expertise.

It's an easy fix, at least, even if it is an annoying one. They're going to have to re-brief the Soldier afterward, but that's not Tyler's problem.

Samuelson shrugs and turns to the panel that connects to the chair. Tyler busies himself with strapping the Soldier down. At least it’s still compliant, docile as he buckles limbs and chest to the leather.

"Setting five," Tyler says, and attaches the nodes to the Soldier's forehead and chest. Samuelson nods. The Soldier is beginning to sweat, it's chest heaving, wide eyed. It's grabbing the armrests in its clenched fists. Animal fear, Tyler thinks. The asset has only the most basic of emotional responses.

It opens its mouth for Tyler to insert the mouthguard. He steps back, and nods at Samuelson to start the procedure. The headpiece comes down and covers the soldier's head in a patchwork of metal and wiring. Electricity arcs. The Soldier starts screaming.

"I always forget how loud this is," one of the operatives says.

The Soldier continues screaming. This will take a while. Tyler sighs, and pulls out his headphones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked this chapter, please leave a kudos and comment!
> 
> Please check out this excellent rendition of [Kravitz, RQ, and Istus in their holiday sweaters](https://femme-fatigue.tumblr.com/post/178586716452/image-description-a-drawing-of-a-framed) by questbedhead/femme-fatigue over on tumblr! We are both _big_ fans. Lexicals/Dooney_Oie also drew this _very good_ picture of [Kravitz wearing Black Widow's MCU catsuit](http://lexicals.tumblr.com/post/178705456951/so-i-got-an-ipad-pro-and-this-was-uh-the-first) and it is... everything you prayed for.
> 
> You can come see us on tumblr where we're always happy to chat: [@anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [@marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)!


	8. The Past Catching Up

Killian steps up beside Lup, both of them half-hidden in the shadows of the Project Insight hangers, waiting for Carey’s signal to come in over their comms. Killian’s wearing a set of mechanical wings Lup has only gotten to see in action a couple of times before — military tech co-opted by SHIELD when they recruited Killian from the air force. She’s got wings and body armor, in anticipation of all the people who are about to start shooting at them. Lup, on the other hand...

“You sure about the uniform?” Killian asks, glancing Lup and her outfit over. “Looks… not bulletproof.”

It’s from the 1940s. Lup is hyperaware of how vulnerable she’s made herself by choosing to wear it on this mission, but wearing her old uniform feels familiar in a way that’s almost comforting. It may be an antique, and Lup and Kravitz may have _borrowed_ it from the Smithsonian’s Captain America exhibit, but dressed like this she’s the Lup Taako knows. Lup as he’ll remember her, as soon as she gets him to snap out of whatever mind control bullshit the Hunger’s got him under.

Taako is her brother and no matter what Kravitz thinks, Lup is certain she can save him. Kravitz doesn’t _know_ Taako. He can warn her about the risks she’s taking all he wants, but Lup knows what she’s doing and what she’s doing is rescuing her dumbass brother from Nazis _again_.

“I’ve got a shield,” Lup says. “I’ll be fine.”

“As long as you’re sure, Cap. I trust you.” Killian looks up at the helicarriers looming above them, ready to launch. Their plan, in theory, is simple. Get an override chip into the main server banks of each helicarrier. The chips will allow Carey to take command of their programming so the helicarriers target each other. If all else fails, Barry is in New York, ready to launch Hallwinter firepower at the helicarriers and take them out before they have to reckon with the consequences of having a sky full of guns pointed at the Hunger’s enemies.

Getting the chips in place _should_ do less damage and keep the disaster relatively contained. _Should_.

Killian adjusts the straps on her wings. “What do you think? First to take out a carrier gets to do the third?”

The comm line crackles to life before Lup can reply and Carey’s voice comes on over the line. “Kravitz has landed,” she says. “He’s heading for the meeting with Lucas. You ready to do some damage?”

Lup activates her earpiece. “Copy,” she says. “We’re gonna have a _blast_.”

Carey snorts. “Was that a pun? Killian, hit Cap for me.”

“Nope,” says Killian. “Need her in tip-top shape for this one. Hit her yourself later.”

“Oh, I will,” Carey says. “Seriously though — good luck.”

“We’ll be fine, babe,” Lup says, using her best Captain America voice. Carey’s sending her girlfriend out to fight an army of potential Hunger agents, two-against-who-the-fuck-knows. She deserves the reassurance.

So does Killian.

“Trust me, I’ve fought the Hunger plenty of times before — they’re not as tough as they think they are. Cap out.” She turns off the comm broadcast and looks up at Killian. “Okay, you’ve got a deal — first to take out a helicarrier gets dibs on the third.” She offers Killian a fist to bump. “We’ve got this.”

Killian grins and bumps Lup’s fist. “No sweat,” she agrees. “The Hunger doesn’t know what’s coming for them.”

#

Infiltrating SHIELD and getting to Lucas’s office, where Lucas is celebrating the launch of Project Insight, is easy. All it takes is a change of clothing and a willingness to walk in to SHIELD headquarters without a gun. Kravitz doesn’t know if the rest of the attendees at this meeting are Hunger agents or not — he’d like to believe only one of five members of the World Security Council is Hunger — but it doesn’t really matter. His job isn’t uncovering who’s innocent and who’s complicit. Not directly anyway. He took a bullet to the shoulder. Kravitz is good and he heals fast, but the Winter Soldier still _shot him_ on the bridge. Today is about showmanship and publishing a lot of information on the internet all at once, not hand-to-hand combat.

Kravitz keeps his head down and plays the role of a good personal assistant. It’s one he’s played before and one he’s _good_ at. The help always slips under the radar.

Lucas is waiting to receive his guests in his office with a scant three Strike Team members playing security. Lucas has champagne on tap and a bank of windows overlooking the ready-to-launch helicarriers outside. Kravitz files in with the other PAs and the Strike Team pays him no mind. A pair of glasses and a change of clothing do wonders for Kravitz’s anonymity.

“We’re here to toast to a new, better tomorrow,” Lucas says, picking up a glass of champagne and toasting his guests. None of them look particular alarmed or excited — bored, almost. Probably not agents of the Hunger. Lucas looks _eager_. “To a world that’s finally safe — a world that runs the way it _should_. Project Insight is one of our greatest successes. With the launch of these three helicarriers, we’ll be able to watch over humanity. To guard our fellow man. We are making history today.” Lucas raises his glass. “To the future.”

Kravitz could wait until he’s sure Lup and Killian have everything in place, or he could take advantage of the perfect cue when it’s presented to him.

He chooses the later, hurling the tablet in his hand at the nearest guard, then dropping down to sweep the guard’s legs out from under him. Kravitz is doing his best to hide that he’s favoring his right side. His shoulder is screaming at him, but he keeps his face expressionless.

Kravitz couldn’t get a gun inside, but he _does_ have a wrist-mounted taser. He sets the charge and presses it to the small of the first man’s back and fires it, incapacitating him.

The other two guards are on Kravitz immediately. Kravitz ducks under the swing the guard on the left takes at him and grabs the man’s wrist, uses the momentum of the punch to send him flying. It buys him just enough time for his taser to recharge. The third guard grabs his left elbow and Kravitz fights back a wince as he spins around, punching the man in the face and then jamming the taser into his side.

He goes down and all it takes is a — maybe _slightly_ over-the-top — kick to the second man’s head to knock him out.

The fight is over in less than a minute. Kravitz straightens up, removes his glasses, and smiles at Lucas. “My apologies, Secretary. There won’t be a launch today.”

Lucas looks alarmed — pale, worried for his personal health and safety — but he’s trying hard not to show it. “You can’t stop the launch,” he says. “You’re too late. You’re wanted for treason, Agent. You won’t be able to slip away this time.”

Kravitz smiles his best work smile — the one that doesn’t reach his eyes, the one he uses when he’s interrogating civilians. Lucas takes a step back. “I won’t have to go anywhere, Lucas. I’m not the one who’ll be tried for treason.”

Lucas glances at the other members of the World Security Council. Definitely not part of the Hunger, if Lucas is worried about them learning the truth — and if Lucas is _worried_ , that means some part of Lucas doubts his own plan. Some part of Lucas has already conceded defeat.

Kravitz’s shoulder still feels like someone jammed a hot poker into it, but that’s a good balm for his wound.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucas says, setting his glass of champagne on his desk. “Stand down, Agent.”

“Didn’t you hear?” Kravitz asks, taking one step towards Lucas, then another, watching him back away. Kravitz needs access to Lucas’s computer to do the SHIELD infodump and so keep Lucas from getting away in the aftermath of the upcoming chaos. He has no plans to kill anybody today, but Lucas doesn’t know that. “I went rogue.”

#

Killian is down. She’s down, but before Taako ripped her wings off like he was plucking them from a fly, she managed to get the chip that will override the first helicarrier’s programming in place. Lup got the second chip in and secured which means there’s only one more to go and then they can take the helicarriers down.

Lup doesn’t understand the ins and outs of computers, but Killian, Carey, and Lucretia were confident that swapping chips would get them control of the helicarriers and that’s all she needed to know. Carey will take care of the rest. Kravitz is — Lup hopes — doing just fine on exposing the Hunger to the world.

Taako’s gonna be part of that. The Winter Soldier, confirmed and exposed. Captain America’s brother — the other _half_ of Captain America — brainwashed and used as an assassin by the Hunger.

Taako will need her, after this. They’ll need each other, just like they always have.

The servers controlling the helicarriers weapons array are located in the depths of the massive ships, in a catwalk lined observation chamber directly above rows and rows of guns they command, presumably to make it harder to sabotage them.

Lup fought her way down to the bottom of the carrier, but now her comm earpiece is out of commission and her whole world is this and nothing else — just the fishbowl that makes up the helicarrier’s base, the server, and Taako, standing between her and the end of the world.

There’s no recognition in Taako’s eyes. No flicker of hesitation like there was on the bridge, even though Lup’s dressed in the old Cap costume — the one they shared, during the war. He stands in front of Lup, blocking the catwalk leading to the central server with his mask off, and he looks cold, cold, cold. He looks like the killer and the ghost Kravitz says he is — a spectre from Lup’s past chosen specifically to hurt her.

He brother is in there, though, and Lup — she raises her shield to block a flurry of bullets from the gun in Taako’s hand — Lup is gonna get him back. She’s got a mission. She’s gonna save the world again, but she’s here for _him_ too. Taako is _not_ going back to the Hunger. Taako’s coming _home._

Lup’s gonna save him or she’s gonna die trying.

“Taako, please!” she says, lowering the shield so she can see him. She raises it again immediately, blocking a blow from his metal arm when he darts in to try and strike her. The impact reverberates down her arm and she grits her teeth against the pain, bracing herself on the grates of the catwalk. It’s just glass below them — ballistic, she assumes, and thick enough to handle a normal person dropping onto it, but who knows if it’ll take both their weight if they fall.

Taako fires another shot. Lup hisses in a pained breath as the bullet grazes her side, tearing into the fabric of the costume and yeah, okay, maybe it’s not the _best_ choice strategically, _definitely_ not bulletproof, but she can take a hit. She’ll be fine.

She steps back so she can lower her shield and look her brother in the eye. “Taako, don’t make me do this,” she says. “You _know_ me. It’s me. It’s Lup. It’s your _sister.”_

Taako lets out a yell that’s pure rage and charges her. Lup slams her shield into his side hard enough to send him flying over the edge of the catwalk’s low railing. He grabs for her as he goes down and Lup reaches back automatically — manages to grasp his wrist before he falls.

There’s a moment where everything feels good. Right. Lup’s been having nightmares about not catching Taako since 1944. This time, she got him.

Taako wasn’t asking for help though — Taako wasn’t reaching because he expected Lup to catch him. His metal hand closes around her forearm and he yanks — _hard_ — and pulls _her_ over the edge too.

#

“What’s your plan here?” Lucas asks, as Kravitz steps behind his desk. “Do you think you can stop the launch from? It’s too late, Agent. It can’t be stopped. We’re going to fix the world. We’re going to make it a _better_ _place_.”

“Hey Krav,” Carey says, in Kravitz’s earpiece. “Killian and Lup have secured the first two helicarriers. Cap’s comms are down, but she’s nearly got the third. You’re good to go.”

Kravitz holds up a hand to cut Lucas off before he can continue his rant. “I’m not here to hurt the helicarriers,” he says. “I’m here to hurt the Hunger. I’m here to expose everything you’ve been working on for the past fifty years.” He pulls the thumbdrive from his pocket — the one Lucretia nearly died for, the one he and Lup accessed in New Jersey. “We have proof. Neatly collated proof that _you_ provided us.”

The other members of the World Security Council are murmuring amongst themselves, looking less fearful and more shocked now. “Lucas,” says one woman. “Is this true?”

Lucas ignores her, completely focused on Kravitz. “Agent — Kravitz, think about what you’re doing. You’re not just burning the Hunger if you release those files. You’re burning SHIELD too.”

Kravitz plugs the USB into Lucas’s terminal and smiles grimly as he opens it and queues up the program that will automatically upload everything on the drive.

Everything on the drive and _more_. Taking SHIELD down requires a lot more data than can be held on USB. That requires a computer with the Secretary’s override built in. That requires access to ever digital and digitized file that SHIELD has. That requires releasing _everything_ , all at once — no holds barred, no secrets kept.

“I know,” Kravitz says. “SHIELD let itself be infiltrated. We can’t trust it as an organization anymore. We’re starting with a clean slate. It’s over, Secretary. Your career is done.”

“Not just mine.” Lucas isn’t very good at this — at keeping his cool under pressure. Kravitz can see him sweating. He makes a terrible politician, really. “Those files are _full_ of secrets — full of mistakes. Do you really want the whole world to know who you are, Kravitz? What you’ve done? Budapest? Cannes? The Red Room? Do you think _Captain America_ will be so fond of you then?” Lucas wields his words like a trump card, like he’s certain he knows what Kravitz’s response will be.

The upload is prepped, ready to start. All Kravitz has to do is push a button. All he has to do is make a decision.

The helicarriers are one thing. Their destruction is paramount, obviously, and they — and the surrounding firefight — loom over D.C. like a bad omen, like a mechanical simulacrum of the alien attack on New York a couple years ago. They're an obvious sign of everything that's wrong, the attempts at creating a new world order and their subsequent refusal to bend to the Hunger's will. Lup might think turning the helicarriers on each other will minimize the damage they do, but Kravitz has no illusions that this battle will have casualties.

The infodump is another beast entirely.

When Kravitz uploads SHIELD’s intelligence to the internet — subsequently exposing all of the Hunger — the fallout will be no less devastating. For everyone, not just the Hunger.

But Lup wants to burn SHIELD to the ground, taking the Hunger with it. When they were planning, she talked about releasing everything publicly as a foregone conclusion — Wikileaks on an unimaginable scale. "No more secrets," she said, and when she spoke, it sounded clear and obvious and _right._ The strength of her conviction is deeply persuasive, doubly so when paired with her earnest expression. There's a reason Captain America inspired battalions, why some WW2 scholars claim that the strength of the Captain America propaganda machine was integral to a victory for the Allies.

Kravitz, now faced with the actual choice, finds himself hesitating.

There are good agents whose positions will be immediately exposed if he uploads the information. RQ is on a mission. She could be in danger. SHIELD will implode from the inside out. The Director agreed to this. It still feels _wrong_ , and he wonders if that feeling is a stray bit of conditioning worming its way to the forefront of his brain.

There are Red Room files in the Hunger files. The two organizations worked together closely for a period of time. If — _when_ — Kravitz drops the information on the public web, everyone will know his history.

Kravitz has never had any illusions about his place in SHIELD. All he had expected when he defected was kinder handlers, a sense of purpose and a cause he could believe in. He knows abstractly that the Red Room treated him badly. RQ and Istus have both stated that as if it is objective fact. He trusts their judgment, but he has a hard time looking back on that period of his life with any sort of emotional lens. It was just his life.

Yet he feels a sense of unease at the idea of just publicly disclosing his entire past.

All the other members of the Red Room are dead. Kravitz saw to that himself. There's no one who remembers his history in its entirety. But the Hunger files come close — they disclose the methods of training, the fact that the Red Room had possession of the Winter Soldier for multiple months, the trigger passphrase cascades that no longer work on Kravitz — _Vostok, legion, stockade._ He would no longer be able to do undercover work. The world would know his weaknesses.

That unsettles him. So much of his identity, so many of his capabilities, rely on being underestimated, in not having the exact methodology of his training, his conditioning known to rogue agents.

He could tell Lup that he was unable to release the information and she would accept it without question. He could protect himself, and SHIELD would be able to brush away most of their worst atrocities and mishaps under the rug. He can't help but wonder if that might be a better option. There are good people in SHIELD.

But. The files imply that SHIELD knew about the Red Room and they did nothing. Kravitz killed most of his compatriots. Kravitz doesn’t know the names of his parents. Kravitz thought he defected to the side of the angels.

Maybe Lup is right.

People don't have a right to the truth. He can't believe that. But here, now, they deserve the truth — _he_ deserved the truth. Intelligence agencies, police forces, military operations need to be held accountable for their actions. Maybe this will stop another Red Room.

Kravitz doesn’t flinch. He looks Lucas in the eye. “Lup will forgive me,” he says. “The world won’t forgive you.”

Kravitz hits _START._

#

Lup’s back slams against the glass floor, head bouncing off of it hard enough to make her see stars. Then Taako’s on top of her. Taako’s got a knife in his hand and he’s — Lup jabs the edge of her shield into his throat to throw him off and he chokes and falls back.

Her shoulder is alight with pain still — a stab wound because she didn’t move fast enough. A lucky blow. Or maybe _not_ luck because Taako was always good, was always slippery in a fight and got _real_ good with a gun during the war, but the Winter Soldier is something else. The Winter Soldier is everything Kravitz says he is — strong and fast and cunning.

Lup jumps to her feet and Taako comes at her again. He’s got a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. Lup grimaces and braces herself to get stabbed again as she bashes her shield against Taako’s hand and knocks the gun away, kicks it far across the curved glass floor of the helicarrier’s observation windows.

The knife to her side hurts like a motherfucker. Her costume, a priceless historical artifact, is stained with fresh blood and she probably owes the Smithsonian thousands now.

Lup falters, the pain from her side and her shoulder momentarily blinding, and Taako grabs the edge of her shield, wrenching it out of her grasp and throwing it in the same direction as his gun. Then he’s on her again. Blow after blow with no shield to fend him off and Lup _has_ to fight back, has to give as good as she gets because there’s the world to think of too — there’s lots of other Lups and Taakos out there who deserve a shot and she’s all the way down here on the dome when she should be up on the catwalk, sliding a little chip into place.

She throws a punch at Taako’s face and he ducks out of the way, kicks the side of her knee hard, unforgiving. Lup nearly goes down again, knees buckling, but then she’s lower to the ground than Taako is and she can grab his flesh arm, can use the strength nobody ever expects her to have to flip him over her good shoulder and onto his back.

Lup’s on him in a second, her knee to his throat, cutting off his air supply as she sits on his chest and uses both hands to hold his metal arm down. “Taako, stop it! You don’t want to do this! I _know_ you. I know you know _me._ This isn’t you. This is _the Hunger._ You’re not a weapon.”

Taako doesn’t speak. He writhes like a wild thing. He hits her side hard enough to make her ribs scream in protest with his free arm and claws at her, tries to shove her legs off, but his struggling grows weaker because even a supersoldier needs air.

Lup’s breathing is ragged and uneven and she _hates_ this. She hates hurting him, but she’s got a mission to complete. Got a world to save before she can turn her full attention to saving _him_.

When she’s sure Taako is out, Lup gets up and _sprints,_ jumps up to catch the edge of the catwalk and pulls herself back up onto it. The chip is in one of the pouches on her belt. She strips off her padded gloves so she can actually use her fucking hands, drops them and tugs the pouch open as she types in the code to open the bank of circuitry she doesn’t understand. She’s just gotta replace one and it —

Lup hears the gunshot before she feels it. A burning pain that tears through her thigh and makes her cry out. Taako’s awake again. Okay. She grits her teeth against the pain and another shot hits her arm, makes her jerk forward against the stupidly complex case holding the servers.

She has the chip in her hand, poised to go in, when the third shot hits her back.

Her knees _do_ buckle this time. It’s worse than — worse than any physical pain she can remember. Worse than crashing the plane. Worse than the way the serum scorched its way through her veins, made her feel like every cell in her body was tearing itself apart. It’s hot and focused and it _throbs_ when she moves. She presses a hand to her stomach, where the exit wound is and tries to ignore the pain. She lifts her arm and slots the fucking chip into place.

Lup slumps down, face pressed against the cool metal of the server case for what feels like forever but can’t be. It can’t be, because when she forces herself to turn over, clutching at her stomach, Taako is only just lifting himself onto the catwalk.

“Taako,” she says, voice hoarse. “Taako, _please.”_

Taako stares down at her, a gun in his hand, and he doesn’t lift it. Doesn’t fire. Maybe he can see how hurt she is. Maybe he thinks she’s not a threat anymore.

“Stop,” he says, and his voice sounds like he hasn’t spoken in years. There’s a crease between his brows. Like he’s not sure _why_ he’s talking to her, why he hasn’t shot her year. “Stop saying —”

Taako doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. Whatever program was on the chip kicks in and the guns beneath them — the guns that were once pointed at every person on earth who might defy the Hunger — turn to point at the other helicarriers. The first shot rings out, distant, and the dome beneath them _explodes._ The catwalk tilts as its support beams are taken out and Taako goes tumbling off it, yelping as he falls, and it’s a _familiar_ yelp. It’s her _brother_ — the same sound he made when Lup snuck up behind him in their aunt’s kitchen. That’s _Taako._

It gives Lup the surge of adrenaline she needs to push herself away from the server bank and slide down the catwalk to what remains of the floor below them — to dodge out of the way when the catwalk overturns and goes down _hard._

Taako doesn’t avoid it. Taako’s pinned beneath heavy metal and there are more shots being fired into the helicarrier. They need to go — they need to get _out._

“Taako, _fuck.”_ Lup darts forward to grab the edge of the edge of the heavy piece of metal pinning him down. “Hold on. I’ve got you. We need to get out.”

“Stop!” he yells, lashing out wish his free, human arm. “Stop talking!”

“No.” They’re both stubborn. Lup will outlast his protests. Lup will convince him. She heaves and the catwalk lifts. It comes up enough for Taako to pull himself free, but he’s grabbing for her as soon as he slips out from under it, slamming his fist into the bullet wound in her stomach.

It sends them both to their knees, has Lup seeing stars as she pants, trying to catch her breath. “Taako, you _know_ me.”

“No, I don’t!” Taako leaps at her, no precision in his strike this time, just fury and pain, just _confusion,_ plain on his face. He hits her and Lup doesn’t resist as they slam against the glass floor, doesn’t hit him back.

“You do,” she says. This time when he raises his fist, he _hesitates._ She _knows_ he knows her. How could he not? They’re a team. They’re twins. Two halves of the same whole. “You’ve known me your whole life. Taako, I’m not going to fight you. I _love_ you.”

“Shut up!” Taako screams, and grabs her hair, slamming her head against the floor.

Lup’s vision goes black, for a second, and when the world comes back into focus Taako is still there, kneeling on top of her, staring down at her with his eyes blown wide with fear. He’s _in there,_ even if he doesn’t realize it yet. Her mouth tastes like blood and bile and her limbs feel cold. “You’re my heart,” she says, voice as soft and gentle as she can make it.

“You’re my mission,” Taako spits, and he slams his fist into her face. Lup can _hear_ her bones break, even as she feels the bright flare of new pain, gone numb in a second, lost in the noise of everything else wrong with her body now.

She forces her eyes open, meets Taako’s gaze. “Then finish it,” she says. “Because Taako, you’ll _always_ be my heart.”

He stops, staring down at her. Lup’s vision is blurring. She wants to say something else. Wants to prove to Taako how much he means to her, how much she’d _give_ for him. The helicarrier is coming to pieces around them. The world all shattered glass and fire and ash and all Lup can think about is her brother and the terrified expression on his face.

She wants to warn him about the beam that’s falling above them, but her mouth won’t work. The words won’t come, and then she’s weightless, falling, and the world goes _black._

#

He hangs from the remains of a metal support beam, metal fingers dug into steel, and watches Captain America fall down, down, down into the murky waters of the river below.

He watches her body sink.

He makes a decision.

He lets go.

He falls too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed this chapter, please leave a comment and a kudos! <3
> 
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	9. A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Wipe

The man in the museum looks like him. So does the woman. That was the most disconcerting part, when he fought her — the close resemblance. He doesn’t — didn’t — get to look in mirrors often, but now he’s examined his own face closely, wiped it clean with paper towels in a gas station bathroom. He’s pulled his hair up so he blends in with the crowds. Stolen clothing from a locker room at a gym.

He wears a stolen hat low over his eyes as he moves through the museum. He tracks the security cameras out of the corner of his eye, keeps his left hand in his pocket. It’s easy to pass. Easy to be unremarkable. He is no one and nothing and nobody has noticed that he’s here — that he’s different from the tourists and school children crowding the Smithsonian’s Captain America exhibit.

Some voice in the back of his head is screaming at him that he shouldn’t be here, that he needs to _go back_ and find his handlers. That he’s making himself an obvious target. He ignores it, like he’s been ignoring everything lately. He dragged the woman from the river. He dove back into the water to retrieve her shield because it was important, somehow. He wanted her to have it.

He _wanted_.

It’s still novel to feel a desire for things to turn out one way or the other. He’s not sure he likes it, but none of the urges he’s followed have turned out badly so far. When he saw the signs baring the face of the woman who looked like him and the shield he pulled from the bottom of the river, he saw a chance for more information. He followed the signs and went to the exhibit because he _wanted to_. Because when he was walking away from the river a handler had come for him and he’d crushed the man’s windpipe and dropped his body into the water. His death would be blamed on the fight and the helicarriers falling. An easy cover up.

He goes to the museum and he sees a man who looks like him, except the man is smiling. In the old newsreel footage the museum plays on loop, the man is laughing and rolling his eyes. He wraps an arm around the woman’s shoulder and leans close to the camera, his eyes half-lidded and a smirk on his face as he says something that isn’t captioned.

His name is Taako and he is Captain America’s twin brother. He was killed in action in the Alps when he fell off a train. Except — that’s not — it’s _not_ —

His brains skips over that information. Doesn’t absorb it. There’s something about it that’s not right and he doesn’t know what. He stays in the museum too long. He watches the newsreel over and over again. He practices the body language and it feels familiar. He waves his hand dismissively. Smirks, lets the expression be crooked and a little cruel, show a little too much tooth. Easy. He doesn’t need a mirror to know he’s got the same gap in his teeth as Taako and his sister.

There’s a connection there that his brain won’t let him make.

The museum closes and he has to leave, but he steals a book from the gift shop on the way out. He stares at the grainy photographs and reads the words. Knows, somehow, that the story is incomplete.

Taako was Captain America’s twin brother. He was killed in action in the Alps when he fell off a train. There was a mission. There was snow. Wind. A bad slip. There was —

There are phantom pains in his metal arm. It’s been making grinding noises ever since the second dive into the river. He will have to find somewhere to receive maintenance, but he’s not ready to go in. The Hunger has safehouses across D.C. and he has cleaned them all of money and supplies.

He gets a cheap motel room. Takes a shower. Cleans up a bit. Eats a handful of protein bars because he’s burning calories faster than he can obtain them, with his high-metabolism.

He breaks into a neighbouring room to steal a second set of unremarkable clothing and he goes to the hospital.

#

The hospital is full of casualties from the helicarrier fight. He hasn’t been eating enough so his eyes are sunken in and the scrapes and bruises on his face haven’t yet fully healed. His arm is stiff when he tries to move it, his joints protesting and whirring in a way they shouldn’t — once he steals the material for a sling it makes a good cover. He looks rough. It’s easy to pass for another disaster victim in the crowded hallways, to put on a vague expression that passes as someone looking for their relatives.

Captain America is being treated on the top floor. Captain America’s room has a 24/7 security detail on it. The Iron Man is in D.C. now, to monitor her. He and the Reaper pass off shifts, overlapping for a half hour to catch each other up on pertinent information. The Reaper is more cautious, would be harder to sneak past. The Iron Man has access to advanced technology, including surveillance equipment.

He isn’t stupid. He knows he’s not going to get in to see Captain America through the front door.

He camps out in empty rooms instead, snagging food from trays of hospital food. He ignores the sludgy soup and the tough meat, the frozen corn and powdered potatoes — he’s had enough of those in his lifetime. He doesn’t know how he knows that, but he does.

He wants sweet. They have jello.

He leaves the red and orange jello alone and takes the green. Flavor shouldn’t make a difference to him, but it does, and the fact that it does has him raiding the hospital kitchen at four in the morning to steal more little cups of jello. He takes it down to the dark morgue and eats twelve servings, then goes outside and scales the side of the building.

The Iron Man is on guard duty. He knows because the Reaper would check the windows into the room and wouldn’t leave Captain America unattended just because she was sleeping. He has to break the mechanism that stops the window from opening fully, but even hanging off the side of the building with one functional arm that’s not difficult for him to do. He slips through the newly opened window and into the hospital room.

Assessing Captain America’s charts is easy. She’s stable and she’s healing fast, like he does. He does a full sweep of the room and assures himself that all the equipment is in working order and nothing is meant to kill her. It takes him all of five minutes and then he’s done.

He should leave. Instead, he stays.

He leans against the wall and he watches her sleep. Her face is open and untroubled, her breathing even despite the injuries to her ribs. But the room is cool and the blanket is down around her elbows. Before he can think about what it means, he’s at her bedside, tucking her more firmly under the sheets. Smoothing her hair back, out of her face.

Captain America murmurs something in her sleep, turns into his touch and sighs a word that sounds like a name.

Taako was Captain America’s twin brother. He was killed in action in the Alps. He fell from a train and when he fell he lost an arm. That’s not in the book or the museum, but it’s _true_. He knows it, somehow.

His left arm is made from metal, but it’s part of him. Right now, it doesn’t respond to his commands. He thinks he had two flesh arms once. He thinks he remembers falling. He remembers the rush of cold wind around his ears. Remembers yelling — something. A word that sounded like a name that sounded like home.

He reaches out and touches Captain America’s hair again, reassures himself that she’s there and safe and real. There’s something he wants to say — words bubbling under the surface of his mind, a scream that wants out. He won’t scream, but he allows himself to indulge in a whisper.

“Lup,” he says, voice rusty with disuse, throat raw with emotions he didn’t know he had.

She shifts on the bed, eyelids fluttering as she starts to wake, but he’s out the window and on the ground before she can sit up.

#

The Reaper stalks the hallway outside of Lup’s room like he’s hunting. There’s nothing subtle about the way his carries himself, nothing civilian about the look in his eyes as he examines each and every person who approaches the door to the room. The man who was the Winter Soldier sees this, out of the corner of his eye, as he walks down an adjoining hall without stopping, and knows Lup remembers something from last night. The feeling of a hand on her hair, perhaps. The sensation of being watched.

He doesn’t visit her floor again. She’ll be discharged soon. There’s no point in establishing himself here. The _real_ problem is that the Iron Man is likely to take her to New York, to his tower, which will undoubtedly have high tech security. She’ll be locked up like a princess in a fairy tale.

Lup would hate that. He doesn’t know why he knows that, but he does.

His arm is a dead weight. Part of him wants to remove it. Part of him wants to pry it from his shoulder and leave in in the Potomac. It’s no good to him now. It slows him down. Logically he knows he should go in for repairs. He should return to an active base and let the technicians fix him. Wipe him. His programming _screams_ in the back of his mind that he needs to go in.

But he doesn’t _want_ to so he doesn’t. It’s amazing how such a simple thing can feel so _enthralling_. He wants more lime jello, so he steals some. He sits on an empty hospital bed and eats it until he feels sick and then he goes outside for a walk. He follows the Iron Man into a coffee shop, stolen hat pulled down over his eyes, and people are so busy crowding around Barry Hallwinter, asking for autographs and photos, that nobody notices him slipping chocolates and pastries and mints and gum and bottled drinks and some chips into his pockets.

He sits on the roof of the building across the street from the hospital, eyes on Lup’s window, and tries everything he stole. He tests out flavours and textures and discovers that he loves chocolate and hates doughy blueberry muffins. Pretzels coated in caramel and chocolate are good, but peanut butter cups are better. Best are the square pastries covered in hard, pink icing and filled with jam. He could eat a whole tray full of those, if he could find them again.

He goes back to his shitty motel room and breaks into the vending machine. He tries everything, showers, steals another change of clothes, and returns to the hospital at night. There’s more security lurking now. A regular patrol outside as well as through the halls. The sling is still easy camouflage. Hospital security isn’t trained to catch ghosts.

He scales the wall again and peeks into Lup’s room. It’s dark and she’s asleep, so he pries the window open and slips inside, light on his feet and nearly soundless.

He has enhanced vision. It’s easy to see in the dark. Easy to spot the moment Lup’s eyes open and she sits up, a grin on her face.

“ _Knew_ it,” she says. “I knew you — wait!”

He is halfway out the window. He pauses, looks back at Lup because he’s — curious. Worried. Hopeful, maybe, except he has no idea what hope feels like. He’s waiting for a handler to come and collect him. Waiting for someone to say the right words and make him fall in line.

“Taako,” Lup says, voice pleading. “We’re going to New York tomorrow. You can’t — you need to turn yourself in. We can go back together. We — _I_ — can help you. I promise.” She pauses, leaning towards him. “You’re my heart, Taako. And nothing is going to change that.”

She said the same thing to him, in the helicarrier, when she let him shoot her and hit her and dropped her shield. The words mean something, to him. He doesn’t know what or how, but he knows that they _do_. They hold a weight and a history that he is unable to comprehend.

He doesn’t know what to say to her, so he says the first thing that comes to his mind. “That’s not my name.”

His voice is a strange, rough thing. It still sounds foreign to his ears. Lilting and odd. He doesn’t remember his accent sounding like this — like Lup’s.

Lup opens her mouth with a frown on her face that he knows means she wants to argue with him, although he doesn’t know _why_ he knows that. Then she closes it, sits back against her pillows. “Okay,” she says again. “If your name isn’t Taako, what _should_ I call you? What _is_ your name?”

There are correct answers to her question: the asset doesn’t have a name; he’s called the Winter Soldier. Neither of those replies come to him. He doesn’t want to speak the words out loud. He frowns at Lup, annoyed, and swings his other leg around, dropping down out of the window and back into the night, where there are no annoying questions to throw him off guard.

#

He goes back to the museum. It’s night and the place is closed, but he’s the greatest assassin in the world. He can break into the fucking _Smithsonian_. It’s not even hard because it’s not like he’s trying to rob the place — although he disables the cameras before entering — he just… wants to watch the newsreel footage again. He wants to look at the exhibits and the larger than life photos of Lup’s face. Her during the war, in black and white, and her after, in the twenty-first century, after she was thawed out of the ice and brought back to life so she could fight _aliens_.

He’s pretty sure aliens didn’t exist before. He doesn’t remember aliens. Not that he remembers much of anything. His mind is like a sieve when it comes to information he hasn’t been programmed with or his training. The Winter Soldier is the perfect killing machine — no will, no heart, no desires.

Except he wanted to come to the museum so he did. Except he likes lime jello and strawberry poptarts. Except he wants to be near Lup.

Someone turned the projectors off, but it’s easy to switch them back on, and when he does the newsreel flickers back to life, sound off, playing the footage of Lup and her unit and her brother, over and over again. It’s only a five minute clip and he’s seen it plenty of times now, but he sits there for half an hour and only stops watching when he hears the security guard making his rounds.

He hides in a dark corner of the exhibit until the old man passes by, then turns his attention to the exhibition panels. One for each of the people Lup led into battle. The Howling Commandos. Taako is there, front and center, the only one of them killed in action during the war except — except his mind won’t stop snagging on that assertion and insisting that it’s not _true_.

Taako’s face looks like his face looks like Lup’s face. He can’t explain that. Not really. It could be a trick meant to lull Lup into a false sense of security, except what would be the _point_? The Hunger is scattered and licking their wounds, exposed. He has no doubt they’ll regroup and come for him, but if they wanted him to get close to Captain America, they would have sent him without destroying all their other plans.

Besides, when he tries to feel for a seam along his jawline, it’s clear there’s no mask on his face, no scars to hint that there might have been a surgical augmentation. His face is his face. It looks _right_ in the faint reflection he can see in the display case holding a mint condition, original run Taako Teddy — sold to raise money for the war effort and capitalize on Captain America’s fame. It wears a little jacket with many pockets. A hat at a jaunty angle.

He reaches up to touch the baseball cap he’s wearing to hide his face and tilts it slightly, then makes a face and moves it back to center. His hair is a ragged mess, falling out of the low ponytail he’s had it in. He’s mad, suddenly, that his arm isn’t working and he can’t braid his hair back with one hand.

It’s a lot, all at once. He doesn’t like this hat. He wants his hair to be braided. He doesn’t like only having the arm as a deadweight hanging off his shoulder.

He sits down and takes a deep breath. Let’s it out slowly. He looks up at the giant photo of Taako’s face above the bear, grinning rakishly, eyes sparkling with mischief — his hair braided and his hat worn at an angle.

“Fuck,” he says, and this time on his way out of the museum he steals one of the replica bears from the gift shop instead of a book.

#

Kravitz is physiologically incapable of getting a headache without also receiving a concussion or other traumatic head injury. He’s still pretty sure he feels one coming on.

“Lup,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Lup, the hospital _needs_ this room. You can’t just camp out here because Taako visited once —”

“Twice!”

“Once when you were _awake_ enough to be certain he was here.” Kravitz looks up at her. “Barry’s got his private jet fueled and ready at the airport to take us to New York. Reporters are going to hound you to death if you stay here. They’re already closing in. I don’t think I can emphasize enough how advantageous Hallwinter Tower security would be right now. We don’t know what the Hunger is doing or what they’re planning. Just because —”

“I know the Hunger, Kravitz,” Lup says, her voice commanding enough that he stops talking. She glares at him, then looks around the dingy hospital room. He should press her about civilians needing the space. Point out that they haven’t put anyone in the adjoining rooms to preserve her privacy and maintain security on the parameter. That a lot of people were injured when they stopped the Hunger’s attack. He should complain about his shoulder still hurting because her brother _shot_ him and wanting to sleep in a soft bed in a secure location.

He holds his tongue. Lup’s shoulders slump.

“I know I can’t wait around, but do we _really_ have to leave D.C.? He had his arm in a sling. The metal one. I don’t think it’s functional. I told him where we were going, but I don’t know how easily he’ll be able to follow.”

“You told —” Kravitz stops, takes a breath. Taako would have been able to track them anyway. He’s the Winter Soldier and Lup jetting off to New York will be in the news. There’s not much they could do to keep her relocation from him. “No, never mind. Of course you did. I’m sure he’d already figured it out.”

“Probably, yeah,” Lup agrees. “Barry’s been bringing me Starbucks and taking selfies with fans all week.”

Kravitz leans against the wall and rubs a hand over his face. Taako’s arm is malfunctioning and his programming is breaking down. It’s a little too convenient. He has no doubt that Barry will be able to repair the arm, and the Soldier is clever enough to take one look at the Iron Man suit and figure that out too. Lup loves her brother. The _world_ knows that. She’d die for him. Has tried to, multiple times now.

If whatever the Hunger did to wipe all trace of personality from the Soldier is breaking down, then Kravitz could buy him trying to defect. The Soldier is smart. Calculating. He’d see the writing on the wall with the Hunger and come calling at Captain America’s door. Get a new gig, maybe. A temporary respite and protection until he could go to some handlers who’d _use_ his skillset. Back to Russia, maybe. Kravitz has been pit against enough Russian agents to know they’d like having the Winter Soldier again, even now.

Lup would accept _any_ version of her brother with open arms. She wouldn’t question anything from him. She’ll make excuses and talk about trauma and she probably won’t be entirely wrong. It would be so _easy_ for someone who looked like Taako — someone who could passably imitate being her brother — to infiltrate her life and her hopes and her dreams.

Kravitz isn’t a good person. He’s fine with that. Lup _is_ and he likes that about her. He wants to protect that in her. In another life, he’d have followed her into war the way he follows her into battle now.

Lup can have her hope. Kravitz will be her common sense.

“Being down an arm won’t impede him,” Kravitz says. “He’ll follow us to New York. He’s probably halfway there by now.” Taako won’t leave until they have, but if Lup thinks he’s going to be waiting for her, she’s more likely to leave D.C. “If you told him where we were going, I don’t know why he’d stick around. You’re the one he’s chasing.”

“When you say it like that, you make it sound like I’m still his target,” Lup says. “If he wanted to kill me, he’d have put a bullet between my eyes the first time he got into my room. He’s confused. He doesn’t know who he is, but he knows he’s _someone_. I told you, Kravitz. I’m bringing him home.”

“Home is New York,” Kravitz says. “You grew up in Brooklyn.”

“Don’t use my biography against me.” Lup gives him a grumpy look, but still slides off the hospital bed. “Okay, fine. But I want to linger on the tarmac a bit, just in case he wants to hitch a ride with us. You never know.”

Kravitz does know. Taako will steal a car. Something nondescript. Switch the plates and take less populated roads with no tolls. Double back a few times. Change cars. He’ll take a couple days to reach New York, but he’ll come and Kravitz can make sure that he and Barry are ready to greet whichever version of Taako shows up at their door, even if Lup isn’t.

#

There’s a way he should do this. There’s a way he was taught to extract himself.

He stares at a gray Ford Focus, parked in an unremarkable residential neighbourhood, and contemplates stealing it. He thinks about switching the plates and driving north. About doubling back and switching cars. About taking days to get where he wants to go.

He thinks about all that, then he goes and buys a train ticket.

The worst part is leaving the museum behind. He likes the museum. He’s visited more than is safe, but there’s a familiar comfort to it now. A security in the images on the looping newsreel. He’s found he can tell, without knowing why, which photographs of Captain America in the suit are of her and which are really of her brother, even when the photo labels say otherwise.

That’s a new addition to the story, one that didn’t make it into the book he stole — Captain America’s brother played Captain America sometimes. They were two halves of a whole. Sometime in the seventy years she was dead, Taako’s role in the suit got written out of history. For a long time, it was just Lup. Then she woke up and forced the world to remember that she was never alone, before. That she always had — him. Taako.

He doesn’t like the thought of leaving the exhibit behind, but he _hates_ the thought of not being able to keep an eye on Lup, so he buys the ticket and gets on the train. All he’s got with him is a backpack full of stolen snack food, the book, and the teddy bear, but even that is more than he usually takes. He doesn’t _have_ things. What would a weapon want with possessions?

A woman sits in the seat next to his and smiles, her expression tinged with sympathy. “Did you get caught in the mess on the Potomac?” she asks, nodding towards his arm in its sling. “My niece is a nurse. I was supposed to be on vacation with her and my sister, but with that whole thing — she’s been working fifteen hour shifts all week.”

It takes him a moment to find words, to remember how to fake a smile. He’s sure it looks false on his face. His cheeks feel like they’re rusty. “Sure did,” he says. “Broke it.”

The woman coos in sympathy and launches into a long-winded story about her visit to the Library of Congress and has he seen the murals? Her guide _loved_ the murals, but she thought some of them were racist, but maybe everything from the past was like that — did he go up to the top of the Washington Monument while he was visiting?

He sits and lets her talk. Halfway through the journey he opens his bag to get out his snacks and she laughs. “Oh, I can tell you’re a student,” she says. “You’ve got a bag full of junk. Here, I’m happy to share.”

She has orange slices and trail mix. The orange, when he tastes it, is one of the best things he’s ever had — tart and sweet and juicy. He makes a pleased sound and she smirks. “Young people don’t know how much they need fruit and veg,” she says. “You went to the Air and Space Museum?”

The teddy bear is at the top of his bag to stop it from getting crushed. It hadn’t occurred to him that he was giving so much away by keeping it close. He nods and takes another piece of orange.

“I couldn’t bring myself to look at the exhibit. I was in the city for the attack. Brought down three buildings on my block.” She shakes her head. “I have the worst luck, being in New York for that and D.C. for this.” She pauses. “I guess we’re both good at being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He looks down at the fingers of his flesh hand, flexes them. There are things he’s good at — killing people, infiltrating, following orders. But he can almost remember doing this before, can feel the shape of a memory forming in the back of his mind, if he concentrates — memories of sharing food and telling stories. Sitting around a fire, maybe. Or in a cold building, huddled for warmth. He thinks he used to talk more, but when he tries to think about who he talked to he can only picture blank faces.

“Yeah,” he says. “Sounds like me.”

When they get to New York, he helps the woman off the train and says goodbye, then he trails her to her apartment. He wants to make sure she’s not surprised by anything else on her way back. There’s a lot that can happen to a civilian. There’s a lot that can happen to someone who talks to the Winter Soldier.

She gets home safe and he stays on the roof of the building opposite hers, waiting. He make sure nobody comes to question the woman who talked to the asset. It’s not something he would have done, before. It’s not something he should be doing now. He should be assessing the security at Hallwinter Tower. He should be finding a way inside, to see Lup.

Instead he sits, and he stays up until morning, until he’s sure the woman who was kind to him on the train is safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter please like a comment and a kudos! <3
> 
> You can find us both on tumblr, where we're more than happy to chat. We're [@anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [@marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com). Come say hello!


	10. New York isn't New York Without You, Love

New York is a dissonant riot of noise and life — it’s flashes of uncomfortable feeling and intrusive mental images every time he turns a corner: cramped brick and bright graffiti and constructed and skyscrapers and smoke — running through damp streets with his small hand clasped in someone else’s and over rooftops with a gun strapped to his back. New York is home and unfamiliar all at once.

He finds a small, dark space and he hyperventilates, hunched protectively over the metal arm. This is not something the Winter Soldier would do, so he lets it happen. He lets the tight feeling in his chest and the static echoing in his brain overwhelm him. It is _human_ in a way that is alien.

When his breathing steadies again, he heads to Hallwinter Tower.

The tower a beacon above Grand Central, all flashy glass and concrete. The security is tight, for an office building. Lots of cameras. Metal detectors. Guards armed with stun guns. Iron Man, Captain America, the Reaper — they all live here. Captain America arrived in New York the previous night. She’s safely ensconced several stories up.

If his arm was working, it would be easy to scale the building or rappel from a neighbouring skyscraper. The roof and middle floors of buildings are never as well protected as those lower down.

He goes for the next best thing, which is the parking garage, except there are extra guards posted there. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but he doesn’t feel like — doesn’t _want_ to kill them. He wonders if they’re disposable to Hallwinter or if someone is betting he won’t kill. It doesn’t matter that they’re right; it’s a stupid bet to make with someone’s life.

Instead of bothering with Hallwinter Tower, he walks into the office building across the street and takes the stairs two and a time to the fortieth floor. When everyone’s left for the night, he sets up shop in a corner office with a good view of the tower and eats everything in the office fridge — leftover Chinese, half a sandwich, yoghurt, five frozen dinners — while he watches and waits.

He can’t see into the tower from here, but he can see _it_ and he knows that Lup is inside. There’s something oddly comforting about knowing she’s so close.

As the night progresses, the tower begins to go dark and it becomes increasingly obvious that the living space is located in the tower is near the top. That makes sense. There’s a landing pad for Hallwinter and his Iron Man suit and for helijets to alight. Smart.

If he’d raided a Hunger drop point when he got to New York, he’d have equipment that allowed him to get a closer look at what was happening inside the living areas — a scope would let him see into the tower, let him trace the shape of bodies through glass.

The thought of pointing a scope at a building Lup’s inside makes him sick, but he doesn’t want to think about why that is. He doesn’t want to _have_ to think, but he doesn’t want a handler doing the thinking for him either.

He wonders why no one has come for him since the first handler he killed. The Hunger is out there somewhere. The Hunger is licking its wounds. He is not going to give the Hunger their weapon back.

He leaves the building in the morning, when people start arriving for work. He takes the stairs down to the lobby and lifts a wallet from a man in a fancy suit so he can buy one of the fancy, sweet coffees they sell in the shop and gets his pastry warmed up. He sits at a table and pulls apart a scone with his good hand while he drinks a salted caramel mocha.

He doesn’t know what to do. The tower is not like the hospital room. He can’t visit Lup the same way. He can’t see her up close. His options are limited and he hasn’t slept in several days. He doesn’t require sleep the same way a person does, but it does impair his functionality.

He could spend days haunting the shadow of Hallwinter Tower and learn nothing. He could spend _weeks_ languishing and not knowing what Lup is doing inside, unable to help her if anything goes wrong because he has no supplies and a malfunctioning arm.

The Hunger will come for Lup because the Hunger has been trying to kill Captain America for years. The Hunger thought they _had_ killed her, but she came back from the dead just in time to stop them consuming everything.

But the Hunger will rise again and it will take aim at Lup. He _cannot_ let that happen. He can’t let her face the Hunger alone.

He feels like hyperventilating again, but this time he represses it, lets his programming take over and keep his breathing steady and even. He finishes his scone and his coffee and he leaves the cafe. He crosses the street and he walks into the lobby of Hallwinter Tower. He goes to the front desk and he smiles at the security guard sitting there, ignoring the flurry of alerts going up around him, ignoring all the guards shooing people away from him and out onto the street. He’s not here for them.

“Hi,” he says. “I wanna see Lup.”

#

He is escorted to a room with cement walls, a heavy door and no windows. The Reaper is already waiting for him. There’s a camera in the corner of the room, trained on them both.

The door shuts behind him and he hears someone lock them in together. Without his metal arm, it’ll take him a while to get through the door, but it’s not impossible. He certainly doesn’t need the arm to kill the Reaper, but that’ll take longer too. The Reaper knows that or he wouldn’t let himself be locked in.

“Taako,” says the Reaper.

He allows himself to wince. It is the person thing to do. “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe not, with that.”

“What should I call you then?” the Reaper asks, arms crossed over his chest. He looks casual, relaxed. He’s not. His gaze is sharp and his attention is laser focused. “Soldier?”

He can’t help his lip curling up in disgust at the title and he’s _surprised_. It’s a tick he didn’t know he had. A tell that happened without any prompting. “No,” he says. “Not that either. Just... Taako’s fine, actually. I’ll do Taako.”

“It’s what Lup wants to call you,” the Reaper says. “It’s who she wants you to be.”

“Yeah, well. She’s too stupid for her own good sometime.” He shoves his flesh hand into his pocket and leans against the wall opposite the Reaper, mirroring his body language. It’s disturbingly easy to dredge up words from somewhere deep inside his mind, to speak the way he thinks Taako would speak. “What magic word do you want me to say here, kemosabe? I just wanna see her. If I wanted to hurt her I would’ve done it back in D.C. You know, in her hospital room? Kinda sloppy on the security work, leaving the window vulnerable like that.”

The Reaper doesn’t show any sign of registering the criticism. It’s impressive. “Lup’s going to trust you,” he says. “She’s going to let you get away with everything. She loves her brother. Him being back from the dead so soon after she is? Well, that’s just a miracle, isn’t it?”

He’s had the same thought. That reasoning is what made him look for scars, look for some sign that his face had changed. It’s too fucking convenient, is what it is — that he’s _alive_ and he’s _here_ and so’s she.

It’s too convenient, so it can’t be real. He’s not Taako. He _knows_ he’s not Taako. But he doesn’t want to be the Winter Soldier either. He doesn’t want to be a weapon or an asset and he _does_ want to be around Lup. He knows she needs someone to watch her six without knowing how he knows that.

He’s not her heart, no matter what she says, but there’s part of him that wishes he were and so he’s here — so he’s let himself be locked in a room with a man who wants to kill him and break his body into little pieces so no one ever finds it. He let himself be cornered and caged to be near her.

The door to the room bursts open and Lup is there, suddenly, glaring at the Reaper. “Taako came to the Tower and you didn’t _tell_ me?”

The Reaper’s body language changes, his shoulders slump and he uncrosses his arms, rolling his eyes. “Barry gave in?”

Lup turns her back on the Reaper to look at Taako, smiling, full of hope. “Taako,” she says. “God, _Taako_. I can’t believe they — never mind. I won’t let them lock you in here again. You wanna come up, babe?”

He doesn’t, really. Up would be harder to escape from. Up means more layers of security and scrutiny. Up means exposing Lup to the danger that he himself poses and putting her in harm’s way. It means letting her think he’s her brother.

But Lup is smiling and happy and _good_ in an untouchable, fundamental way. Lup radiates a comfort and familiarity that he craves.

He looks at her, and he can't say no, so he does what spies do best — he lies. “Yeah,” he says. “I’d love to.”

#

Lup takes him to a kitchen and beams at him when she opens the fridge. “I can’t believe how much _food_ the future has,” she says, and then a shadow crosses her face, briefly. “Well, some places. Not everywhere, but _God_ Taako — the _options_. Are you hungry? Do you want something?”

He’s always hungry, a raw gnawing in the pit of his stomach, so he nods, even though he just had the scone and the coffee. “Sure.”

“Cool cool.” Lup grins and raises her eyebrows. “What do you want? I’ll make — I mean, anything, basically. Barry keeps the place _stocked_.” She pauses. “Anything as long as it doesn’t require fucking _bananas_. Bananas are _terrible_ now.”

He shifts in place, his good hand in his pocket, and shrugs his functional shoulder. _Options_ aren’t great right now. He’s already feeling overloaded from being dragged up an elevator to the second-to-highest floor in the tower and pulled into a room as big and open as the kitchen. There’s a whole wall of windows someone could shoot through. The door is at his back. He moves so he can keep an eye on it and Lup at the same time. “Anything.”

Lup pauses, frowning. Obviously that’s not the right answer. Obviously that’s not what Taako would say and he’s fucked this up already, but he’s — all this space is almost as bad as the little cement room downstairs.

“Oookay,” Lup says, drawing out the vowel. She claps her hands together and he doesn’t jump. “Pancakes. Lots of butter and syrup. You would not _believe_ the syrup they have in the future.”

Lup talks like she thinks her brother has only been sleeping. Like she thinks he was frozen in time the way she was. He doesn’t know if it’s denial or wishful thinking — she wants the Taako she lost back, the one on the newsreel, the one who had teddy bears named after him and fell from a train in the Alps. The one she loves.

That Taako, whoever he was, doesn’t exist anymore. He is sure of very little, but he’s sure of that. He still sits on a stool and watches Lup make pancake batter. There’s something soothing about it. She’s sure of herself — doesn’t need to look at a recipe to measure out the flour and milk and oil and eggs. She scoops it all into a bowl and beats it together. She keeps pausing, looking at him, like she’s expecting something from him but he has no echo of this ritual in his mind.

She cooks the pancakes in silence and then puts a plateful of them in front of him, with butter and a bottle of syrup. “You know, Barry could probably fix your arm.”

He flinches at the mention of the arm, at the thought of someone digging around inside it, and Lup takes a step back, raising her hands in surrender. “Only if you want it fixed, babe. I just figured — I mean, if you’re gonna kick me out of the kitchen or whatever, you probably need it, right? Or like — I’m sure Barry could make you something new, if you wanted new. It’s up to you. Whatever you want, Taako. Nobody’s going to make decisions for you again, I promise. You’re safe now.”

He doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t feel safe. He’s not _Taako_ , even if his mind if playing tricks on him. Even if his face looks like Lup’s face looks like Taako’s face.

He cuts off a piece of pancake with the fork Lup gives him and leaves the knife alone because its presence feels like a test. He eats the pancakes plain. Lup lathers butter and syrup on hers, but doesn’t say anything about him not following suit.

“Can I touch you?” Lup asks, after a moment, her voice soft.

He looks up, frowning. “Touch me?”

“Yeah, your — your hand,” Lup says, gesturing to the hand that holds his fork. “I wanna hug you, but you — I’m not gonna ask you to let me hug you yet. I get that this is, you know, _a lot_. I was fucking confused when I woke up.”

He puts his hand down and slides it towards her. Lup smiles, blinking too quickly, and reaches out to cover it with hers. She squeezes gently.

“It’s so fuckin’ good to see you,” she says, voice hoarse, barely above a whisper. “I know you’ve been through hell, but I promise, Taako. I _promise_ — nobody’s gonna get anywhere fuckin’ near you again. Between me and Barry and Krav? They could send armies and they wouldn’t gain any ground. I’ve _got_ you. Okay? You’re _safe_.”

Lup is sincere in a way he doesn’t understand. She means every word she says and it _terrifies_ him that she cares about him so much when he’s not who she thinks. It’s almost enough to make him confess — almost enough to make him tell her he’s not her brother.

Almost, but not quite, because the pancakes are warm in his stomach and Lup’s hand on his feels familiar in a way he can’t describe. He tries to smile, but he can feel how wrong the expression is on his face. “I’m here,” he says, because that’s true. He adds another truth, because he’s told her so many lies and she deserves at least a small gesture: “I like the pancakes.”

Lup laughs and lets go of his hand. “Asshole,” she says, her voice full of affection for someone he’s not. “It’s good to have you back.”

#

Kravitz glares at the screen in Barry’s lab. He refused to turn on sound for the live feed of Lup making the Winter Soldier pancakes, but admitted that yes, okay, Kravitz had a point about keeping an eye on them.

“Lup can handle herself, Krav,” Barry says, glancing up from repairing some mechanism for his suit. “He had a point downstairs. If he wanted to hurt her, don’t you think he would have by now?”

“I don’t trust him,” Kravitz says. “You shouldn’t either. He’s the world’s greatest spy. You think he doesn’t know how to infiltrate an organization? He has the perfect cover for getting intel on the Avengers. Who wouldn’t trust Captain America’s long-lost brother?”

It doesn’t matter that this _is_ Lup’s brother, that Kravitz is certain a DNA test would pull up a match against whatever the army has on record for Taako. He knows the Winter Soldier and he knows how good he is at infiltration. He _also_ knows a pretence when he sees one. Whoever that is, sitting in the kitchen with Lup, it’s not the brother she lost in the Alps. It’s someone who spent decades being systematically broken by the Nazis and the Russians and the Hunger. It’s someone with seventy years of programming in their head. It’s the man who _trained_ Kravitz, who helped shape him into the most feared agents to come out of the Red Room — the _only_ Reaper still standing.

“I thought _you_ were the world’s greatest spy,” Barry says, shooting him a crooked grin. Kravitz glares and Barry snorts, putting down the soldering iron in his hand. “Okay, sorry. I mean, I get where you’re coming from. Honestly. I don’t trust him yet either, but I love Lup and that’s — you can’t honestly tell me that’s not her brother.” He gestures to the screen, which shows Lup and the Soldier and their identical faces. “Look at them.”

Kravitz takes a seat next to Barry. “Surgery,” he says. “Dental work.”

Barry raises an eyebrow and pushes his glasses up his nose. “You don’t honestly believe that, bud,” he says. “You’re just worried about Lup. It’s cute.”

Kravitz bristles because he’s _the Reaper_. Barry’s employees literally get off the elevator and take the stairs when he gets on and what the fuck does _Jeremy in IT_ think Kravitz is going to do to him? “Cute,” he says, voice flat, utterly devoid of emotion.

Barry turns back to his work. “Yup. I mean, I know Lup’s pissed at you now, but she’ll get over it by the end of the day. You were worried about her. Wanted to make sure she was okay. You love her too. You’re a good friend, Krav, but sometimes you gotta just… you gotta let people do what they wanna do, you know? Do you _really_ think you’re gonna change her mind?”

Kravitz has never met someone as stubborn as Lup before. He _knows_ he won’t. “You’re just going to let the _Winter Soldier_ live in your tower? Where you also live?”

“Right now the Winter Soldier is eating pancakes and holding hands with my girlfriend so… yeah,” Barry says, shrugging. “Look, we know where he is and that he’s safe. We’ll be able to keep an eye on him. Plus, I know you don’t agree, but I have _pretty_ good security here. This is the safest place for him to be for him _and_ for the rest of the world. I’m pretty sure it’s where he wants to be too. I know it’s where Lup wants him. Why fight this?”

The Winter Soldier once taught Kravitz how to break every bone in a person’s arm and keep them awake while he did it. The Winter Soldier forgot him. Shot him. The Winter Soldier is cold like the ice he’s named for.

“He’s going to hurt her,” Kravitz says. “He’s going to break her heart.”

“Maybe,” says Barry. “But it’s _her_ heart, not yours. She gets to decide who breaks it.”

Kravitz can’t really argue with that. Lup is an adult. She can make her own mistakes. He turns his attention back to the monitor and watches Lup and the Soldier eat pancakes.

The Soldier glances up and clocks the camera in the ceiling. Kravitz knows it’s not possible, knows it’s all in his mind, but for a fleeting moment it’s as if their eyes meet.

Kravitz is the first to look away.

#

Taako looks at Lup like he’s waiting for instructions. Like he’s lost and there’s some cue she’s supposed to give him that she hasn’t worked out yet — some magic word she’ll say to make everything better.

She wishes she knew what he wanted. She wishes she could _fix_ him because it’s clear, even just watching him eat pancakes — plain, no butter or syrup even though Taako _loves_ sweets — that something is broken.

But Taako is here and Taako is safe and they’ll figure everything else out together. Lup _knows_ her brother. She can see glimpses of his personality in the way he tilts his head and quirks his lips, in the way he talked back to Kravitz. She knows Taako’s trying, even though it’s hard. She knows he’s in there and she loves him and she wants him to be back — wholly back — and to not have to deal with the Hunger fucking him over like this.

Kravitz talks about the Winter Soldier like an infallible god. Lup looks at Taako and sees her asshole, foul-mouthed, whip-smart brother. She sees her other half, except someone took him and tried to strip him of everything that makes him special. Lup isn’t going to _stand_ for that. She’s not going to let the Hunger win. Taako fought long and hard and lived through _so much_. He went through hell and came out the other side.

If she gets to wake up in the twenty-first century, if she gets to meet a smart, cute guy who she’s in love with, if she gets to live a _life_ , then so does Taako. Over her dead fuckin’ body is someone taking that from him.

Taako’s only just gotten into the shower when Barry and Kravitz show up at her door. She gives them an unimpressed look. “You’ve been watching us?”

“Yes,” says Kravitz, unrepentant. He’s in full Reaper mode now, clipped words, eyes trained on the bathroom door, not bothering to move like a normal person as he walks soundlessly across the room. Lup could definitely take him in a fight, but he’s fuckin’ uncanny sometimes. Like he can switch his humanity on and off.

Behind Kravitz, Barry shudders theatrically, for her benefit, and Lup can’t help smiling at him. “I’m pissed at you both,” she says, and crosses the room to kiss her boyfriend.

Barry rests his hands on her hips and shrugs. “We wouldn’t be very good teammates if we didn’t watch your back,” he says. “I think I talked Krav down a bit.”

“I’m right here,” Kravitz says, stepping back from the door.

“Sorry, bud. You’re in Reaper mode,” Barry says. “You move so quiet sometimes I forget you’re around.”

Kravitz does a very good murder-glare. Barry doesn’t flinch. Barry’s known Kravitz long enough to be used to it.

“You saw the file,” Lup says, looking back at Barry. “Do you think you can fix his arm? I told him you could, but —”

“ _Lup_.”

She pauses. She probably should have known Kravitz wouldn’t be a fan of fixing Taako’s arm. “Kravitz,” she says, and lets go of Barry so she can turn to face him, squaring her shoulders. “Is there a problem?”

“You want to fix his _arm_ ,” Kravitz says, and he’s still got the murder-glare going, but he’s back to being a person, raising his voice as he gestures to the closed bathroom door. “The _Winter Soldier’s_ arm.”

“ _Taako’s_ arm,” Lup corrects. “Yes. Of course I do.”

“The one advantage we have on him right now is that his arm doesn’t work,” Kravitz says. “The only reason he turned himself over is because of that arm. And you want to just hand it _back_ to him?”

Lup can feel her blood starting to boil. “Are you suggesting,” she says, “that we _purposefully_ leave him helpless? That instead of _fixing_ him we leave him carrying it around like a deadweight?”

“Yes,” Kravitz says. “Because apparently I’m the only one here thinking strategically. You’re letting your feelings for your brother cloud your judgement. That is not —”

“Don’t you _dare_ say that’s not my brother!” Lup snaps. “He pulled me from the Potomac. He followed me to New York. That is _Taako_ and he’s lost and hurt and we’re going to _help_ him because we’re the _good guys_ , Kravitz.” She glares at him, taking a step closer. Kravitz doesn’t step back because of _course_ he doesn’t. He thinks he’s right. “If we leave him injured when we _could_ be helping him, how are we any better than the Hunger? He’s my brother. He’s a fuckin’ _person_. A working _arm_ isn’t a privilege to be earned.”

“You’re giving him everything he wants,” Kravitz says, staring her down.

Lup stares right back. “Good.”

“Hey, uh, the shower’s off,” Barry says. “Kravitz, why don’t you go — hit some stuff, maybe? In the training room?”

Kravitz turns his glare on Barry, who _does_ flinch this time, then stalks off, out of the apartment. Probably to sharpen knives and brood.

“Taako shot _me_ three times and you don’t see me throwing a tantrum,” Lup says, even though she knows she’s being unkind to Kravitz. Kravitz is just doing this because he doesn’t think anyone else is taking Taako’s former role as the Winter Soldier seriously. Lup _is_ , but she always knows that Taako wouldn’t hurt her. Taako would _never_ hurt her. Not really. Not now. “Two bullet wounds is nothing.”

“Yeah, well, Kravitz is, uh, just a guy,” Barry points out. “I mean, a scary guy. I’d definitely lose to him in a fight, but we don’t bounce back quite as quickly, you know?”

The door to the bathroom opens before Lup can tell Barry that actually it’s a little more complicated than that. Taako has a towel around his waist and another wrapped loosely around his shoulders, to catch the water dripping from his hair. The bits of his chest Lup can see are scarred up in unfamiliar ways. The towel covers his shoulder.

It’s probably strategic.

“He doesn’t trust me,” Taako says.

“He doesn’t know you yet,” Lup says. “Don’t worry. He’ll get over it.”

“It’s fine,” says Taako, shaking his head. The look in his eyes is kind of — dead. Kind of lifeless. Lup _hates_ it. “I wouldn’t trust me either.”

“So,” Barry says, overly loud. “If, uh, if you wanna put some clothes on, bud, I can take a look at that arm whenever. I bet you’re real tired of only having one hand, huh?”

“Can’t do my hair,” Taako says. He steals a glance at Lup. “I like it braided.”

Something in Lup’s chest relaxes. Taako had no opinions about food, no criticisms for her pancakes even though she didn’t offer to put anything in them and the future has _lots_ of pancake options, but this is _something_. This is a sign she can cling to that he’s in there and she can get him back. It’s stupid. It’s just hair, but she’ll take it. It’s true. Taako almost always wore his hair braided.

“I can help with that, babe,” Lup says. “You won’t _believe_ how many hair products the future has. You’re gonna have a _field_ day with all the colors.”

#

He hadn’t realized how _exhausting_ being around Lup would be. He’d thought being in Hallwinter Tower would soften the want in his chest that pulled him towards her and New York. It does, to an extent — his mind is a quieter place with her around, especially because she doesn’t seem to want to run away. That’s — good. Being able to keep an eye on Lup is very good. But she keeps asking him _questions,_ and the open plan living room-kitchen area of the apartment is _too_ open and she keeps looking at him like she expects something from him. He doesn't know enough about being Taako to deliver.

Hallwinter leaves soon after the Reaper does. It’s a partial relief. On the one hand, it’s one less person to keep track of, but it also means he’s alone with Lup again and has the full force of her attention on him. He wishes that she would give him clear directions on what she wants from him.

"Do you have a change of clothes on you?" Lup asks. He's surprised she doesn't know the answer. He assumed his bag was inspected when he came in. Maybe she didn't do it personally. He shakes his head. "Okay," she says. "You can borrow some of my stuff. And then I'll fix your hair, since you're down an arm. Sound good?"

He's not sure. He wants his hair to be dry. He wants it in a braid. He's not sure he wants anyone touching it.

"Sounds good," he says, and tries to copy her smile. He wants her to be happy and that means being Taako. Taako would be pleased to get his hair braided by his sister, he's sure of it. He looked happy to be squashed against her in the newsreels. Taako had no problem with touch.

Lup smiles at him, which means he got it right. "Okay, I'm sure I'll have something that’ll fit you."

He hesitates. "Yeah, it'd mean some real dire shit for your wardrobe if you didn't," he says, a little tentative. He thinks she wants him to _say_ things, but he’s still feeling out the role he’s assigned himself.

Lup laughs and walks toward one of the doors, beckoning him to follow. He pads after her, making the effort to walk loud so she doesn't startle. He wants her to know that he is following her.

Her bedroom is darker than the living area. There’s no wall of windows, which is reassuring. There's a queen-sized bed piled high with pillows and a duvet and blankets. They all look very soft. "Sit wherever," Lup says, and he sits gingerly on the edge of the bed, reaching out to touch the blankets. They _are_ soft. He strokes them with his fingertips a few times before realizing that Lup is watching him. She looks sad. He snatches his hand away.

"No, you can take the blanket if you want," she says hastily. She walks closer to him. Kneels next to him so that he's looking down at her. "Taako, don't — don't feel like you have to ask _permission_ for anything, okay babe? It's... if you want the blanket, just take the blanket." She pauses. Looks even sadder.

Taako suppresses the urge to cringe away from the sadness in her eyes. "We always shared, before," he says, a question disguised as a statement.

To his surprise, it lightens the expression on her face. "Yeah," she says. "Christ, we were so fuckin' poor."

He knows that. He read the little blurbs on the Smithsonian walls. He nods.

Lup pats him on the knee, gets up and walks over to the closet. To his relief, she doesn't ask before bending down to rummage in a drawer. She pulls out grey sweatpants and a blue t-shirt and hands them to him. "You probably want to change in the bathroom, yeah?"

He doesn't particularly have a preference, but he stands and takes the clothing to the bathroom. He drops the towel to the floor and steps into the sweatpants. They're very warm and fit well — much softer than the tac gear still piled up on the bathroom floor. The shirt, on the other hand, swamps him and reads _HALLWINTER INDUSTRIES_ across the front.

He stares at himself in the mirror. The pale face, the dark circles under his eyes. The sweatpants and too-big tee. The wet hair, limp against the back of his neck, curling where it’s beginning to dry. He doesn't look like the Winter Soldier. He doesn't look much like the photographs of Taako, either. He looks like Lup, if Lup spent three straight days awake and had a metal arm. He tries to lift his arm. It whirrs sadly, but refuses to move.

He doesn't want to keep looking at himself. He puts the towel back around his neck to keep his shirt dry and walks back into the bedroom. Lup's found a sling somewhere, and she's adjusting the straps, using her own arm as a guide. She glances up at him and seems to _brighten_. He's scared of the effect he has on her.

"Hey, try this on, yeah? Ganked it outta the first aid kit." She shrugs it off and holds it out to him. He takes it from her and manhandles his metal arm into it. "Better?"

He nods. The sling is supporting more of the weight – he hadn't noticed the ache in his shoulder until the pressure was released.

She studies him for a moment, then frowns. "I didn't tell you where the hairdryer was, did I? That's on me. You want me to do it?"

He doesn't know. "If you wanna," he says.

She glances at his sling. "Sure, one blow-dry comin' up."

She herds him back to the bathroom, which seems very small with two people in it. Another enclosed space. He’s going to have to get used to this. Lup opens a cupboard and pulls out a hairdryer, already plugged into a hidden outlet.

He doesn't flinch when she turns the hairdryer on, though the sharp roar of hot air surprises him, even though intellectually he knew it was coming. He steels himself for the touch of her hand against his scalp. Her hand on his hand, after they ate had been pleasant, but people and machines around his head don’t tend to feel _great_ for him.

She runs her fingers through his hair, and although the first light touch of her hand almost makes him jump across the small room, he forces himself to stay still. He relaxes by degrees. Lup moves the hairdryer around his head and although he kind of hates having a loud machine that close to him, the way she cards her fingers through his hair is soothing. The air is hot against his skin and he has been so cold for so long. Right now, nobody is asking him to say anything. Nobody wants him to _do_ anything to anyone else. All he has to do is stand here and let Lup take care of him.

He thinks maybe he could get used to this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter, please leave a comment and a kudos. <3
> 
> We can be found on tumblr where we're [@anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [@marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com). Come say hello! We also posted liner notes on the start of the second act of the fic after posting the last chapter, which you can [read here](http://marywhal.tumblr.com/post/180011987479/all-the-things-you-prayed-for-liner-notes-2). Basically, we've now broken from MCU canon and moved into more fanon territory. We hope you enjoy this leg of the journey too!


	11. Tokyo Banana

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: There is a depiction of a panic attack from an outside POV in the first section of this chapter.

Barry isn’t a cyborg guy. Or, well, theoretically he is. He was very into sci-fi as a kid or he never would’ve come up with the Iron Man suit, back in the cave he tries not to think about. There’s a difference between appreciating the concept of cyborgs and being faced with a real life cybernetics problems though. Biology? Human anatomy? Not really an area Barry’d call himself an expert in.

But SHIELD is in shambles and outside of a few key players, they don’t know who they can trust because the fallout from the Hunger’s reveal hasn’t settled yet. Congress is in an uproar. There’s a Senate Committee being convened. The media is skewering Kravitz for the info dump and Lup for the fall of the helicarriers. Barry’s… kind of the only person _he’d_ trust with looking at Lup’s brother’s arm. They don’t know enough to make an informed decision on who else they can trusts.

Besides, he may be Iron Man, but Barry knows he’s not the most intimidating figure when he’s not in the suit. Going off what little he’s read from the Winter Soldier files JARVIS has managed to scrounge up, that’s probably a good thing.

Barry doesn’t ask Lup and Taako to meet him in his lab because he’s not stupid. He shows up at Lup’s apartment with his tools and a bag of fresh croissants from the bakery on the corner and lets Lup shepherd him into the room. He knows, from their texts, that neither she nor Taako has slept in the twenty-four hours Taako’s been in the tower, so he brings coffee too.

“I wasn’t sure how you took it, so I brought all the fixings,” he tells Taako, setting the cup down with cream and sugar beside him. “Lup says you’re okay with me taking a look at the arm today?”

Taako’s hair is braided back, out of his face. He’s dressed in sweats that belong to Lup and a Hallwinter Industries t-shirt that hangs off him. In some ways, he looks better than when he showed up at the front desk the day before — cleaner, at least — but in others he looks… not great. His eyes are vacant and he stares at the coffee like he’s not sure what to do with it.

Barry takes out a croissant and puts it down beside the coffee. “This is for you too. The bakery’s _great_. Lup said you, uh, you kinda had a sweet tooth?”

Taako picks up the croissant and takes a bite. There’s flicker of interest on his face as he looks down at it, maybe some surprise. “S’good.”

Behind Taako, Lup beams. “Yeah, Taako _loves_ pastries,” she says. “Always has. I’ll fix your coffee, babe. Let Barry see your arm.”

Taako puts the pastry down and shifts so Barry can have better access to the arm. When Barry reaches out to touch it, Taako flinches. Barry pulls his hand back. “Sorry, bud,” he says, pitching his voice soft and low. Maybe that’s not what he should be doing. Maybe that’s patronizing. Barry’s got no idea. A comforting bedside manner is not something anyone’s ever attributed to him. Barry _likes_ people, but he’s not always great at reading them and _boy_ is that gonna be a problem here.

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I’m probably not going to do much today. I just wanna get a look. I’m not gonna do anything until I’ve got an idea what I’m getting into.”

Taako’s eyes dart to Lup, briefly, and then he shakes his head. “It’s cool,” he says. “No big. Go for it, thug.”

Barry’s still not sure Taako believes what he’s saying, but he’s reaches out and touches the arm. He lifts it at the elbow, slowly, to remove it from the sling Taako’s wearing. Barry tries to keep his movements slow and steady as he straightens it out. Taako’s eyes are glazing over, as Barry manipulates his arm, which doesn’t seem good.

“Taako?” he says. “Taako, you can tell me to stop any time you want. You’re in control here. It’s your body. Your arm.”

“Asset is not —” Taako snaps his mouth shut to cut himself off and a split second later he’s on the other side of the room, eyes wild, back against the wall, metal arm hanging limp at his side.

“Fuck,” Lup says, under her breath. She holds her hands up in a sign of surrender and takes a cautious step closer to him. “Taako, babe, just _breathe_. It’s okay. Everything’s okay. You’re safe. You’re home. The Hunger’s not here. Nobody’s gonna hurt you.”

Taako’s breathing is ragged and he looks like a man on the verge of a panic attack — confused and scared and hopeless. Barry’s _been_ there and if this is what happens when Barry _touches_ Taako’s arm, then he’s not sure he wants to know what opening it up would do.

Kravitz can be as suspicious as he wants, but Barry? Barry’s convinced. This isn’t a master spy trying to manipulate them. This is Lup’s brother. This is _Taako_ and he’s lost and scared and needs their help.

“I think that’s enough for today,” Barry says. “Right? No more arm touching. I promise. We can try again later if you want, but we made a good first attempt.”

Taako watches him like a caged animal, unsteady, his chest heaving as he breathes in and out like he just ran a marathon. He turns his attention to Lup and holds out his right hand.

Lup takes it and moves closer, but doesn’t touch Taako anywhere else. She breathes in slow and deep, exaggerated and obvious as she looks at her brother, and keeps it up until Taako’s breathing evens out to match hers. Until the tension in Taako’s shoulders releases and he slumps back against the wall behind him.

“Babe, you did good,” Lup says. Taako looks up at her like the praise means everything to him, even though her voice is shaking, even though Lup likes she might be the one to fall apart next. “You did _so_ good. I’m sorry I pushed you on the arm thing. Shoulda waited longer, yeah? You don’t even know Barold yet. This one’s on me.”

“No,” Taako says. “I’m not — I —”

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Barry says, cutting off the blame game before it can start. “Let me order just a _wild_ amount of pastries. Like an _outrageous_ number. I can get them delivered and we can taste test. I’ve been thinking and I’m sure there’s a bunch neither of you has had before. We’ll see what you’re into.”

It’s a stupid suggestion, but pastries are the only thing Barry knows Taako likes right now. It’s all he’s got.

“Hell yeah,” Lup says, after a moment. She looks at Taako again and puts on a false smile. “Babe, you’ve _got_ to try a cronut. They’re gonna blow your mind.”

#

Taako follows Lup around like a ghost. He haunts her peripheral vision as she moves around the apartment, his footsteps deliberately heavy. He’s not as good as Kravitz at letting himself be noticed. Or maybe he is, normally, but right now he’s... right now there’s so much so _obviously_ wrong with her brother that Lup’s not sure how to even start trying to fix him. Right now the fact that he kind of stomps around the apartment is the least of her worries. She wants to scream, but she _can’t_ because Taako won’t let her out of his sight.

Lup gets it though. She doesn’t want to leave Taako on his own, but _god_ does she need space. She’s determined not to show him how much seeing him like this hurts though. There’s so much missing and seeing Taako with Barry was surreal. Like watching a horror movie.

This isn’t how things are supposed to be. SHIELD is falling apart around their ears. The Hunger’s still out there somewhere, regrouping. Taako coming in should be the _good_ thing in her life, not another hard one.

Lup makes Taako lie down on her bed, after she and Barry fill him up with pastries. She plies him with pillows and blankets because she _knows_ he likes them. She knows he likes the fleece throw from the foot of her bed especially, from the way he touched it.

If Taako was feeling like himself, if the Hunger hadn’t fucked up his mind, she wouldn’t have had to remind him that he could take it. He would have stolen it and told her it was his and she would have thrown her spare clothes at him and called him a dick. He would have laughed in her face.

Lup tucks Taako into bed, full of carbs and fat and sugar, and waits until he passes out to leave the apartment. She feels like she’s a teenager skipping out on fucking babysitting duty. If Kravitz was acting like himself she’d get him to come down and keep an ear out for Taako, but he looks at Taako like an enemy — cold and assessing. Kravitz doesn’t trust Taako as far as he could throw him and Lup’s not sure how to convince him that Taako’s on their side now.

The elevator slides open for her when she heads down the hallway and Lup smiles as she steps inside. Her boyfriend is a weirdo and a creep, but he’s a good dude. It takes her up a floor, to the communal living space, and she steps out to find Barry waiting for her with a tablet in his hand.

“Stalker,” she says, and leans in to kiss him. “Thank you for today. For everything. Taako’s sleeping, but he — Barry, he’s _real_ bad. He’s barely even _Taako_ anymore.”

Barry’s arms wrap around her waist, pulling her close to his chest. “Fuck, Lup. I’m sorry,” he says. “I should’ve known that looking at the arm on his second day here would be too much. He doesn’t even _know_ me yet.”

“He wanted you to,” Lup says, shaking her head and pulling back to look down at Barry. “I mean, can you imagine? He’s so… he’s fuckin’ _terrified_ , babe. He’s so scared. He’s pretty good at hiding it, but I’m his sister. He can’t keep that shit from me.”

It feels selfish to be mad about this. She thought Taako was dead and now he’s _not_. He’s back and sure he’s fucked up, but so is she. They’ve both been through some shit and they’ve both changed and she _knows_ she’s not the same person she was when Taako fell from the train. She knows all that, but there’s still some small, angry part of her that wants Taako to just be what she needs. To just be _Taako_. A part of her that wants him to show her that he remembers how to be _himself_ for more than thirty seconds at a time.

“My brother’s the most opinionated asshole I ever met,” Lup says, instead of voicing that. “He talks shit about _everything_. It’s the fuckin’ worst and I hated it and now all I want is that _back_ , you know?”

“He’ll get there,” Barry says, rubbing her back with the hand not holding his tablet. “Lup, he came here for you. He came here because he loves you and he trusts you. He _knows_ you and even if he’s, uh, he’s not all there yet, he’s gonna catch up, you know? The rest is coming. If he’s anything like you, this isn’t gonna hold him back for long. You’re unstoppable.”

Lup laughs and presses her face against Barry’s shoulder, turns her head to kiss his neck. “Thanks,” she says. “Sorry for making you my brother’s literal sugar daddy today.”

Barry lets out a bark of laughter and squeezes her fondly. “Nah, it’s fine,” he said. “Threw off my entire diet plan. I’ve never eaten that many baked goods in one sitting before and my body’s confused. Especially about all the dairy. But it was fun. And I think it was… good? I think I gotta earn Taako’s trust before I can repair his arm and it was a step in the right direction.”

Lup nods and pulls back, smiling down at her boyfriend. “It was fun,” she says. “He likes cronuts. Knew he would. They’re the kind of weird bullshit Taako woulda gone nuts for when we were kids, if we could afford shit like that. We used to buy… When we had the money to get away with it, we’d buy a _ton_ of Twinkies. He fucking loved them.”

“Wait,” Barry says, frowning. “You had _Twinkies_ in the thirties?”

“Yeah.” Lup gives him an amused look. “Why does everyone assume all we ever ate was potatoes and onions? Your family didn’t invent _everything_ , Hallwinter.” She pauses. “They used to be banana-flavored though. When we got them. Now they’re vanilla and I know how bad they taste compared to, like, real food.”

“Oh fuck,” Barry says, perking up. “Do you think Taako’d be happy if I got him banana snack cakes? Because there’s these things in Japan — Tokyo, really — that are… you know what, I’ll just buy some. Overnight them. It’ll be good. Facilitate bonding, you know?”

Barry looks _thrilled_ by the idea of buying her brother cake. His eyes are bright behind his glasses and he’s barely suppressing a grin. Lup loves him.

“You’re such a nerd,” Lup says, and even to her own ears, her voice is full of way too much affection.

“Love you too,” Barry says, leaning up to kiss her. “He’ll be okay, Lup. You’ve just gotta give him time. He’ll get there and I bet it’ll be sooner than we think.”

#

Kravitz should apologize to Lup, but he’s not sorry. He knows he hurt her feelings, but hurt feelings mean nothing if you’re dead.

And maybe the Soldier had a point, during Kravitz’s brief interrogation, about being able to hurt Lup earlier if he wanted to, but Lup’s handed Kravitz the perfect motivation for the Winter Soldier turning up on their doorstep and acting nice — Barry fixing his arm. Of _course_ the Soldier came here, to Hallwinter Industries, the makers of robotic marvels like the Iron Man suit, the company Lup’s boyfriend owns and runs. If anyone can get a complex piece of machinery like the Winter Soldier’s arm working again, it’s Barry.

Maybe Kravitz is focusing on the Soldier instead of worrying about the info dump. Maybe he’s trying to ignore that right now people are reading about the Red Room and dissecting his past all over the world. Maybe he’s focusing on Lup and Taako because it’s easier than thinking about whether or not RQ is going to make it home safe or not.

He’s pretty sure the files don’t mention anything about the Soldier’s involvement with the Red Room in detail, but he’s not _certain_. It’s too late for Kravitz to change his mind about releasing the files now though.

Lup’s mad at him over being suspicious of Taako now, but she won’t stay mad long. Not until she finds out Kravitz knew, but he had a chance to tell Lup about her brother when they first met and he didn’t take it. It’s done. He’s going to have to live with the consequences. He’s focusing on other things now. Trying to keep himself distracted and his friends _alive_.

Kravitz waits until he’s sure Lup’s with Taako, then goes to see Barry.

“Are you really going to fix his arm?” he asks as he walks into the lab.

Barry looks up from the tablet he’s poking at and raises an eyebrow. “Hi Krav,” he says. He taps his screen and a projection of the Soldier’s arm appears between them — the schematics from the scarce information on the Winter Soldier included in the info dump, suspended in the air beside a photograph of the arm itself. “I think I can fix it. It’s all — I mean, I could make it _better_ , given half a chance. This is some Soviet bullshit, but for now… yeah, I can fix it.”

“Barry, do not give the Winter Soldier a _better_ incredibly powerful arm,” Kravitz says, crossing his arms and giving him an unimpressed look.

Barry snorts. “I wasn’t saying I was gonna do it _right away_. Besides, I couldn’t if I wanted to. Taako won’t let me near it.”

That makes Kravitz pause. “What?”

“He nearly had a panic attack when I tried to get a look at it earlier. I’m not gonna force him to sit and let me open it up until he’s more settled.” Barry taps the screen again and the projection changes. Instead of the arm, it’s a video — no sound — of Barry and the Soldier sitting at Lup’s kitchen table. Barry’s manipulating the Soldier’s arm, nice and slow, and then something changes and the Soldier’s got his back to the wall, his chest is heaving with short, sharp breaths. Kravitz can’t make out his facial expression from this angle, but they way the Soldier’s holding himself looks like he’s on the verge of coming undone. Like he’s about to break.

“Can’t fake that,” Barry says. “Seriously, Krav. He’s... it’s rough in there. Lup’s really broken up about this. I know you just don’t want anyone getting hurt, but you _gotta_ see that he’s not a danger to her. He’s just _scared_.”

Kravitz stares Barry down. Everyone in this building underestimates what the Winter Soldier is capable of. “You can absolutely fake a panic attack,” he says. “Someone who’s been experimented on for years? It doesn’t take much to extrapolate that they’d be uncomfortable being touched. Especially in a way that reminded them of their previous handlers.”

“You couldn’t have said that _before_ I tried to take a look at the arm?” Barry asks, setting his tablet down. “Seriously, bud. I knew it was a risk, yeah. That’s why I didn’t do it in the lab. But you weren’t there. You didn’t _see_ him. He was terrified and Lup was the only thing that reassured him. She grounded him.”

Kravitz really, really wishes _someone_ would take him seriously. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, he’s scared — terrified, like Barry said. His breath is coming quicker. His eyes are wider and his pupils are blown. His heart-rate has sped up, body language changed — shoulders hunched in, a slight tremble to the way he’s standing, unsure what to do with his hands. “Barry?” he says, and his voice shakes.

Barry gapes at him. Kravitz takes a step back, curling in on himself further. He digs his fingers into the meat of his arms.

“Okay!” Barry says. “Jesus, _okay_ , I get it — you could’ve been an actor. _Please_ stop the uncanny valley bullshit. I don’t like this.”

Kravitz drops the persona cold, straightening up and raising an eyebrow. “You can fake anything,” he says. “If you’re good enough. The Winter Soldier is the _best_. If he’s here, he’s got Captain America and Iron Man protecting him from the Hunger. Offering to fix his broken arm. Don’t underestimate him.”

Barry grimaces. “Fine,” he says. “It’s gonna take weeks for me to get close to that arm, Krav. You’ve got plenty of time to make sure you’re not just being biased here. And he’s — look, I’m not saying I agree with you, because I don’t, but if he _is_ the Winter Soldier than the Winter Soldier is Lup’s brother. Was _always_ her brother. We’ve got a chance of turning one of the deadliest people in the world into one of the good guys and helping Taako reclaim himself. If you ask me, that’s worth a little risk.”

Sometimes Kravitz feels like the only realist in the building. “You and Lup are really made for each other,” he says, wearily. “Try not to get yourselves killed giving the Winter Soldier his arm back.”

#

He fucked up. He knows he fucked up and he’s not sure how to fix it. After the arm thing, he woke up in Lup’s apartment alone. He woke up, checked the parameter, looked for any sign of Lup, then returned to the bed and got back in. He lay there until Lup came back to say she was cooking dinner if he wanted to help.

He stood next to her and watched her slice vegetables, fingers twitching, knowing from the glances Lup kept shooting him that he was doing something wrong, but unable to figure out what it was.

Lup keeps sneaking off when she thinks he’s asleep. She talks to Hallwinter in hushed tones on her phone or texts with him. She looks _sad_ and she thinks she’s hiding it, but she’s not doing a very good job.

It’s been two days and Hallwinter hasn’t tried to fix his arm again. He can’t decide if Lup changed her mind or if this is a punishment — if maybe the rush of unfamiliar _feeling_ that came over him when Hallwinter moved the arm around convinced Lup he shouldn’t be repaired.

He wouldn’t blame her for deciding he was too broken to bother fixing.

He follows her around the apartment — and around the Tower, when she lets him. He watches the Reaper watch him and does his best to pass inspection. The Reaper can probably tell he’s faking it. Lup can maybe tell too. She gives him hints, sometimes, about how to be Taako, and he tries to follow them. He tries to piece together the clues she leaves and the information he has from the exhibit and the flashes in his mind — the uncomfortable fragments of insight that sometimes come to him — into something that looks like Lup’s brother.

Hallwinter visits Lup once a day, at least. In some ways, he’s easier to be around than she is, although he feels no pull towards Hallwinter like he does with Lup. Hallwinter gives him sweets and talks and looks at his arm like it’s a problem to be solved. He can take being looked at like a problem by Hallwinter. He understands that. He _is_ a problem.

Part of him wants to tell Hallwinter that it’s okay, he’ll try harder to accept his arm being touched next time, but that’s not his place to decide, it’s Lup’s. She’s the closest thing he has to a handler here.

Hallwinter comes into Lup’s apartment while Lup’s braiding his hair, grinning from ear to ear, a stack of boxes in his hands. “They came!” he says. “Took a little longer than I planned but I’ve got ‘em.”

“What came?” Lup asks, tying off the braid.

“The things I was telling you about,” Hallwinter says. “Tokyo Bananas. Hey, Taako, Lup says you like Twinkies?”

Sometimes pretending is easy. “Sure do,” he says, although he has no idea what Twinkie are. If Lup says he likes them, he likes them.

“Great,” says Hallwinter. “They changed the flavour to vanilla on the, uh, originals, but _these_ are the next best thing. Actually they’re probably better. I got a bunch and stuck some in the freezer because I figured — I mean, if you like them it’s probably good to have them around, right?”

His body tenses, when Hallwinter mentions the freezer. He forces himself to relax. Lup is safe. Lup knows what’s best for him. He’ll do what she wants. “Freezer?”

“Oh yeah,” Hallwinter says. “They only keep for a week? Not like Twinkies. They’re actually made with fresh fruit and cake and — actually you’d probably know more about how that stuff works than me, right? Anyway.” Hallwinter puts one of the boxes down and opens it, then pulls out a little yellow cake wrapped in plastic. “Tokyo Banana.”

He glances at Lup, who’s grinning as she slides down from the top of the couch to sit by his side.

“Babe, they totally look like fancy Twinkies,” she says. “What the hell?”

“Told you.” Hallwinter smiles at Lup like he adores her. It’s good for Lup to have people like that, people who care and look after her and who’ll treat her the way she should be treated. People who’ll look out for her, because even though he _wants_ to protect her, without his arm he’s not as useful.

Lup grabs another cake from the box, ripping the plastic open. “They’re not gonna be as good, you know. Bananas suck now.”

Hallwinter snorts. “So you keep saying,” he says. “Taako, you wanna try one, bud? _I_ think they’re decent.”

He glances at Lup, who hands him the cake she unwrapped. “Might as well give him the benefit of the doubt, right? How bad can they be.”

Lup likes it when he likes things. She’s been giving him pastries every morning. He takes the cake. “Looks good,” he says, because Lup said they’re like whatever the hell a Twinkie is.

Lup unwraps another cake for herself. He waits until Lup takes a bite to try his and it’s — good. It’s filled with a cream that’s not-quite sweet enough, but _good_. Soft and sweet and possibly his favourite thing yet — better than the lime jello or the strawberry poptarts or the cronuts.

He pops the rest of it in his mouth all at once and Lup laughs. “Yeah, okay. These are better than I expected them to be,” she says. “I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me like this, Barold.”

“I didn’t know Twinkies were even _around_ when you were a kid until you told me,” Hallwinter says. “Let alone that they used to be banana flavoured.”

“Kids these days,” Lup says, grinning at Hallwinter and his greying hair like this is an old joke. Like it’s a routine they both know so well neither of them needs to say the punchline.

There’s a familiarity between her and Hallwinter that makes something twinge in his chest, when he watches them together. Lup has a life carved out for herself — Captain America, a national hero again, always, forever. She’s an icon. She’s a person so full of caring that she can even extend it to him — so full of caring he’s pretty sure that even if she knew he wasn’t really her brother, was only a weapon pretending to be human, she’s still care about him.

He isn’t going to risk it. If Lup knew, she’d be sad. He hates the thought of making her sad. She deserves to have Taako back and he’s the closest thing there is.

He wishes he were better at pretending for her, but he’s doing his best. He’s doing what he can.

“You want another, bud?” Hallwinter asks, nudging the box of snack cakes closer to him.

Lup is smiling. He can see her face, out of the corner of his eye. He knows she’d like it if he had more. She’s always happy when he eats. When he swears. When he makes his face look like a person’s.

“Fuck yeah,” he says, grinning — mouth pulled more to one side than the other, eyebrows quirked, the smile Taako wore in the newsreels, when he was plastered to Lup’s side, laughing at the camera. He takes another pastry and deliberately doesn’t tense up when Lup leans against him. Makes a point of keeping his body language relaxed, even though she’s up against his metal arm. “They’re better than I thought.”

“Right? Not quite right, but, like, _close_ ,” Lup says. Sometimes agreeing with her, echoing her opinions, doesn’t work, but when it does it works well — makes her beam at him.

“So, uh… Lup hasn’t said anything about it, but I was wondering…” Hallwinter trails off and his eyes dart to the arm in its sling. “Do you think you’re ready for me to try looking at the arm again anytime soon? We’re on your timeline here, but I’m sure it’s getting old having to wear the sling all the time.”

He doesn’t know the answer to this one. Lup hasn’t brought it up again. He thinks maybe she changed her mind.

He looks at her, waiting, and the smile on Lup’s face fades a little. “It’s up to you, Taako,” she says. “I don’t want — I mean, you had a fuckin’ _panic attack_ last time, you know? I don’t wanna put you through that again if you’re not ready, but any time. Any time you’re up for it, Barry’ll take a look.”

He really wishes she’d be clearer with instructions, but it’s obvious Lup wants him to say something that sounds like her brother. He looks at Hallwinter. “Sure,” he says. “Might as well try. Maybe I won’t have a fuckin’ panic attack this time.”

“Great,” Hallwinter says, smiling. “Perfect. That’s — yeah. Is tomorrow good for you? I’ll bring my tools and everything. I’m gonna — I’ll explain what I’m gonna do first, you know? I think that’ll, uh, that’ll help.”

“My schedule’s wide fuckin’ open, my man,” he says, because it’s true. Because all he does now is stay in Lup’s apartment, with Lup, and tries to figure out how to be what she wants and this is a step towards that. This is a move in the right direction. “Lay it on me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you liked this chapter, please comment and leave a kudos. <3
> 
> You can still find us both on tumblr, where we're [@anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [@marywhal](marywhal.tumblr.com), but you can now _also_ find us on **twitter** where we're [@4non4lchemist](https://twitter.com/4non4lchemist) and [@marywhal](https://twitter.com/marywhal). Come say hello!


	12. Unraveling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: There is a depiction of a POV character having a panic attack in the second section of this chapter.

Kravitz comes to see her the first time she leaves Taako sleeping and doesn’t immediately go to Barry. Lup probably should’ve expected it, but she hadn’t done any training or left the Tower since Taako showed up and she’s getting antsy from being cooped up so long. She needs to _move_ and also to _hit things_ because Taako’s a mess and she has no idea how to help him.

She hears Kravitz enter the training room halfway through her workout and throws one last, hard, punch at the heavy bag. If Kravitz doesn’t want to be noticed, then you don’t notice him, which means he wants to talk.

She turns to face him. He’s in his tight, black workout clothes, but it’s an obvious farce. “Are you here to apologize?” she asks. “Because if you’re here to lecture me about Taako again, I don’t want to hear it.”

Kravitz crosses his arms over his chest, face impassive. “I’m not going to apologize for worrying about your safety.”

Sometimes, when he gets like this, Lup wants to shake Kravitz until he acts like a person. She hates that she’s found herself looking at Taako and having the same thought. When Taako doesn’t think she’s looking, she sees him staring into the middle distance like a computer in screensaver mode, conserving his energy until it’s time to emote again. It’s a sharp contrast to the brother she remembers — animated and aggravating and entirely unable to shut up.

Lup turns back to the heavy bag and hits it again. “Guess we’re all outta stuff to talk about then.”

Kravitz is silent behind her. He’s a spy and an assassin. He’s had patience trained into his bones. But Lup was _born_ with stubborn in hers and she’s not gonna be the one to break first.

“I won’t apologize for worrying about you, but I will admit I was… harsh, before,” Kravitz says, eventually. “I should have told you when Taako first showed up at the building.”

“Damn right you should have.”

“ _You_ should still have let me interrogate him.”

Lup whirls around to glare at Kravitz. “That’s my _brother_ ,” she snaps. “You think I don’t know he’s fucked up? I’ve been _living_ with him, Krav. I can see how broken he is, but he’s _not_ the Winter Soldier. I saw that version of him too and this isn’t the same person. Taako is confused and hurt and he needs our _help_.”

“I read some of the Winter Soldier files from the data dump. I know what they did to him. Taako needs to be around people who care about him. People who aren’t gonna fuckin’ threaten him or act like he’s a bomb about to explode. He needs people he can trust. A support system. He needs _me_ because I’m his family and he’s mine.”

Kravitz’s face remains expressionless. “Taako is your brother,” he agrees. “But he’s _also_ the Winter Soldier. They’re two halves of the same person and he was the Soldier a lot longer than he was Taako.” He raises a hand to cut her off when she opens her mouth to protest. “I know you love him, so I’m not asking you to be suspicious. I’m asking you to let _me_ be suspicious _for_ you.”

Giving Kravitz her blessing to act shitty about Taako feels an awful lot like being suspicious herself, but maybe if Kravitz _sees_ how Taako is, sees how quiet and hesitant he acts, then he’ll admit Taako’s not hiding anything. That Taako’s just… _hurt_. Just extraordinarily, unfathomably hurt and fighting his way back inch by painful inch.

The weird Japanese Twinkies helped. Being able to use his arm again will probably help too. He’ll be able to do things for herself and won’t have to rely on her all the time. Watching her cook all their meals must be killing him. Taako used to love giving her shit in the kitchen. He’d always take over and turn her into his sous-chef.

She hated it before. Now she’d give anything to have Taako complaining about her knife skills again.

Lup mirrors Kravitz’s pose, crossing her arms over her chest. Things are hard enough just looking after Taako. She doesn’t need to be fighting with one of her best friends too. “You’re not allowed to be a dick to him. Be suspicious if that’s what you need, but treat him like a person and not someone you’re interrogating.”

“I can do that,” Kravitz says. It’s too easy, but Lup’ll take it. If Kravitz breaks his promise, that’s on him.

“Good,” Lup says, and stretches her arms over her head. “You wanna throw some knives at me for a bit? I’m dying to run around.”

Kravitz’s shoulders relax and he unfolds his arms, raising an eyebrow at her. “Rubber knives or real ones?”

“Depends how annoyed you’re feeling,” Lup says, letting herself smile. “Bruises heal faster than stab wounds.”

“One time,” Kravitz says, and rolls his eyes. The eye rolling is a good sign — Kravitz doesn’t let people he’s _really_ annoyed with see emotion. “If you protected your legs better, I wouldn’t have stabbed you.”

“Rubber knives today,” Lup says, as she walks to the equipment rack and picks up her training shield. “You’re too rowdy for pointy objects. I don’t need your enthusiasm stabbing me in the thigh.”

Kravitz snorts. “Don’t worry, I’ll leave that to Barry.”

Lup chucks the practice shield at him because he fucking _deserves_ it — not very hard, he’s not a super soldier — and Kravitz laughs as he catches it and throws it back to her. “You can hardly blame me when you set me up for it.”

“You’re terrible and I hate you,” Lup says, grinning. Everything’s still a mess with Taako, but at least she and Kravitz are good. This one, small part of her life has sorted itself out. “Throw a fuckin’ knife, you nerd.”

#

Hallwinter is going to look at his arm again. Is going to examine and repair the part of him that is malfunctioning. It’s a thought he hasn’t been able to get off his mind. He’s gone through an entire second box of Tokyo Bananas, thinking about it, because Lup told him to eat as many as he wanted and when he eats them he feels… comforted, somehow. They’re familiar in a way they shouldn’t be because _nothing_ should be familiar. The Winter Soldier has no memories, only instincts.

His arm isn’t the only thing malfunctioning, but he’s keeping everything else close to his chest. No one has expressed interest in wiping him and he wants to keep it that way. Lup likes when he shows personality, likes when he puts in the effort to play at being a person — to play _Taako_ — but there’s a voice in his head pointing out that he shouldn’t be like this. Telling him to fall in line. To request a reset.

None of his previous handlers would have let his behaviour stand, but Lup isn’t like his other handlers. Lup cares about him. Lup worries that he’s not comfortable. Lup makes sure he eats. She braids his hair and loans him loose, warm clothing. She talks to him like he’s her brother and sometimes he’ll say something and she’ll laugh.

Lup wants him to have a functional arm, so he’s going to sit still and not have a panic attack and Hallwinter is going to repair him.

He saved her from the river — after trying to kill her — and now she’s saving him too. She’s keeping him away from Hunger. So he’s going to get better at being Taako for her. He’s going to be _exactly_ what she wants him to be.

When Hallwinter comes to Lup’s apartment again, he comes armed with tools.

“Okay, bud,” Hallwinter says, setting the tools down on the kitchen table. “Lup’s gonna be here for you and if you need to stop at any point just tell me, okay? We’ll call the whole thing off the second you feel uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, cool,” he says. He’s been through worse than whatever Hallwinter’s going to do to his arm. He’ll be fine. “Go wild, my dude.”

Hallwinter gives him a look that says he’s not buying his nonchalance, but he keeps his facial expression mild and uninterested. Stares him down.

Hallwinter blinks first, looking down at his tools.

“Seriously, Taako,” Lup says, sitting on his right side. “If you wanna stop, we stop. It’s your arm.” She holds out her hand. “You wanna hold hands for this?”

Lup likes it when he accepts being touched. He reaches out and laces their fingers together, watching her smile. He’s still not used to the casual physical affection from her, but he likes it. Lup feels safe.

She squeezes his hand. “I’m here, babe. I’ve got you.”

Hallwinter sits to his left. “Okay, Taako,” he says. “I’m going to take your arm from the sling and stretch it out on the table. Then I’m going to open it. Take a look. I don’t think I’m gonna be able to do much today. I just wanna get the lay of the land. I’ll scan the interior so I can poke around with a mock-up instead of prodding you. We’ll make this as quick as possible. Good?”

He nods. There’s only one right answer to the question. “Taako’s good.”

Hallwinter smiles and taps the side of his glasses. Something flickers across the lenses — they’re maybe augmented screens disguised as lenses — and then he does exactly what he said he’s do: he takes the arm out of its sling. He lays it out on the table. Hallwinter picks up a long, thin screwdriver and slides it under one of the arm plates.

He has to look away. He focuses on keeping his expression controlled, his breathing even. Lup’s looking at him like she’s worried which means he’s not doing as good a job at pretending as he wants to be. He gives her hand a squeeze, the way she did to him, trying to reassure her. He can’t risk opening his mouth because he’s not sure what’ll come out of it.

“You’re doing great,” Hallwinter murmurs. There’s a soft, metallic _plink_ as a panel pops off the arm. “Just a couple more plates and I’ll do the scan.”

A couple more plates is nothing. A couple more plates is fine. He didn’t even feel the first one come off — can’t feel anything, from the arm. He can’t feel anything, but his brain is telling him he should. His brain is saying his arm is being pulled apart. It’s saying this should hurt. This should be the worst pain he’s ever felt.

His mind is full of the echoes of a distant scream. His stomach lurches like he’s falling. His brain is all images of snow and rock and snow wind and snow and blood. It’s the memory of bone deep cold, like the tank, calling to him to give up and rest. A cold so fierce it turns burning hot when he relaxes into it — hot like ice crystals forming in his veins, bubbling up under his skin, sharp and biting like little knives. He can feel his lungs struggling to inflate and his heart struggling to beat. His heart _stopping, but_ his mind still working — a split-second of self-awareness, a flash of “oh, this is what it feels like to die,” over and over and over for years and years and years in the tank and Hallwinter is prying his arm apart, piece by piece, with just a little screwdriver, doing the required maintenance. Lup is holding his hand and it feels like being restrained, like being tied down to a chair in the basement of a lab.

His brain is _screaming_. His brain is telling him run, to get out, to _leave_. He breathes through his nose and keeps his face blank because he’s going to be _good_ for Lup and this is — this is what she wants him to do. This is what she needs from him right now.

It’s easy, almost, to let it all — stop.

He lets go of remembering and feeling and wanting and everything is distant, now. He’s watching Hallwinter stick a long, thick wire inside the arm, watching him rotate it slowly, a blue light flashing over the inside of the arm. Hallwinter is looking at him and smiling and, from far away, he feels himself smile back, but he says nothing.

All he hears is muffled, distant ringing. Hallwinter puts the camera away and starts replacing plates, putting them back on faster than he took them off. He’s more sure of himself now. He finishes up and says something. Pauses. Looks concerned. Looks at Lup.

Lup squeezes his hand and he turns to look at her as sound starts to filter back into his brain, as the world starts to feel closer — distant still, but more real.

“— you okay?” Lup’s frowning. Confused? Maybe concerned.

He’s not. He nods anyway.

Lup’s shoulders relax and she smiles. “Good,” she says, and reaches up to touch his cheek.

The touch to his face throws him back into his body. He jerks away from the touch, but forces himself to stay seated this time. He doesn’t want to worry her.

“Fuck, sorry, Taako,” Lup says, and how did he miss the _emotion_ in her voice before? She sounds like she’s about to cry. “You scared me for a second there, babe. You looked… next time tell Barry to stop, okay? He’s a big boy. He can take it. You don’t have to push yourself. We want you to feel _safe_ here. We want you to be okay.”

“I’m okay,” he says, automatically. His voice sounds wrong. He’s not putting the right emphasis on his words — like he’s reciting a script poorly. This isn’t how infiltration works. This is how you got caught. This is how you got tied to a table and experimented on and lose your arm when you fell. This is how you learn what it feels like to have metal attached to your bones, to have your flesh joined to an arm that isn’t yours.

He pauses. He pushes everything out of his mind. He tries again. “I’m good,” he says, and this time his voice dips up and down, like a person’s voice. “Didn’t even hurt.”

Lup still looks heartbroken and he doesn’t know how to fix it. He’s starting to think some things are unfixable.

#

Lup’s hands are shaking. Her hands are shaking and she’s trying to — she wants to make dinner. It’ll give something Taako to do besides sit at the table and stare at nothing. He hasn’t moved since Barry sealed his arm back up. Barry put his tools away and took them out of the apartment so Taako wouldn’t have to think about them.

Barry came back after stashing his tools because Barry’s a good guy who can tell that neither she nor Taako are doing good right now.

“Hey,” Barry says, walking over to her at the kitchen counter and covering her hands with his steady ones. “Let’s order pizza.”

“ _Jesus_ , yes.” Lup lets her shoulders slump, looks at Barry and attempts to smile. “You’re a genius, babe.”

Barry’s lips quirk into a smile that Lup’s sure is a lot more real than whatever the fuck expression is on her face. “I _did_ build the first Iron Man suit while being held captive in a cave in the middle of nowhere,” he says. “So, you know, yeah. I am.”

Lup snorts and presses her lips to his. “Nerd.”

“What, uh, what pizza toppings does Taako like?” he asks.

Lup looks at Taako again. Taako, who looks empty. Who’s not even shaking. He’s just sitting at the kitchen table, as still as a statue. The _stillness_ is one of the worst parts of the way Taako is now. He learned how to go still and steady during the war — he’d had to, as a sniper — but when he wasn’t behind his rifle he’d still been himself. Twitchy and irritable, constantly talking with his hands, fiddling with his hair. This? This isn’t Taako.

Lup hates asking him for his opinions on things now. He just looks at her like maybe it’s a trick question and he’s looking for a hint.

“No clue,” she says. “Let’s just get pepperoni. Everyone likes pepperoni.”

“Do you want to step outside and call in the order?” Barry asks, which is his way of offering her a breather — a break from keeping herself in check in front of Taako and _God_ she’s lucky to have Barry in her life, but — no, she’s not leaving Taako right now.

“Nah,” she says. “You order it. I’m good.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.” Lup kisses him again and pulls away so Barry can order the pizzas — probably online because he hates talking to strangers on the phone — and walks over to Taako, sliding into the seat on his right again.

“Hey, T? We’re gonna get pizza, okay? It’s good. You’ll like it.”

Taako comes to life in pieces. His fingers twitch and then his shoulders slump, become less soldier-like. He blinks, twice, and turns his head to look at her, face like a mask before the emotions come back and he tilts his head and smiles — too big, too happy. “Yeah, cool,” he says. “Pizza sounds good.”

“Pepperoni okay? I told Barry it’d probably be good.”

“Uh-huh,” Taako says. “Pepperoni’s okay.” He pause, a moment full of uncertainty, and Lup can almost see his mind working, can almost follow his thought process by the hesitancy in his eyes. “Are… you okay?” he asks, and it nearly breaks her heart.

“ _God_ , Taako. I’m — I mean, I’m not gonna lie to you and tell you I’m fine, but you don’t have to worry about me, babe. I’ve got Barry. Kravitz is still kind of, you know, an asshole, but he’s only being an asshole because he cares. I’m good. I’m _great_ because you’re here and we’re gonna figure this out, okay? Fuck the Hunger. We’re gonna get the fuck through this.”

Taako raises his right hand, offering it to her, and Lup takes it in hers again, squeezing gently. Taako squeezes back.

“ _Fuck_ the Hunger,” he says, and it’s probably the most emotion Lup’s heard in his voice since he came back. The most _Taako_ -like he’s sounded.

She laughs, leaning over and pressing her forehead to his. “God, I missed you, T,” she says. “We’ve got this, yeah? We’re not gonna let those Nazi bastards win.”

“Yeah,” Taako says. “Yeah, we’ve got this.”

Lup’s not sure Taako believes what he’s saying. She’s not sure she believes it either. But if they keep repeating it, keep saying the words, they’ll _make_ them true. Lup got herself turned into a super soldier, got sent across the Atlantic, and rescued her idiot brother through sheer force of will once. This is _nothing_.

They’ve got this. They can handle it. Everything is going to be okay. Repeat it until it’s true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. Please leave a comment and kudos if you enjoyed this chapter! <3
> 
> We're back! If you don't follow us on tumblr ([@anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [@marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)) then you might not have caught our announcement, but finals and work combined to mean we couldn't get this chapter up and edited for our last scheduled posting day. We _did_ , however, collect this fic and its side fics into a series for your convenience.
> 
> Speaking of sidefics, if you want something soft after this chapter, **read our ATTYPF Candlenights special:** [The Lights Are Shining Brightly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17175842/chapters/40384415), which delves both into Blupjeans and Kravitz's relationship with RQ and Istus.
> 
> A big thank you, too, to darkblueboxs on tumblr, who drew [this amazing piece of art of Lup and Taako](http://darkblueboxs.tumblr.com/post/181015063274/lup-and-taako-from-all-the-things-you-prayed)! Please like and reblog their work because it's _great_.


	13. Circling the Drain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: There is a depiction of a panic attack from an outsider's POV in the second section of this chapter.

Kravitz waits for Lup to go to the gym again, then he breaks into her room. If the Soldier — Taako — tells on him, Kravitz will pay for it, but he’s banking on Taako keeping quiet. Kravitz is banking on his assumptions being _right_.

Kravitz has been reading. Selectively. Seeing what information on the Soldier is floating around in the files he released to the world and avoiding interacting with anything about him. It’s easier than sorting through the parts of his own past laid out on display. It’s easier than thinking about the inevitable Senate Heading he’s going to have to attend. _Someone_ is going to have to answer for the leak. They compromised national — _international_ — security.

Kravitz is prepared to be the one who appears before the senate. He just doesn’t want to think about actually doing it until it’s unavoidable. So he’s been reading, and he’s been thinking about Lup and the Winter Soldier.

Once upon a time, Lup knew her brother better than anyone. Kravitz doesn’t doubt that. He knows how much she missed him. He also knows how happy she is to have him home in any form. Lup’s capacity for caring is one of the defining traits of Captain America. It’s admirable. It makes people want to follow her, makes them _loyal_ to her — it also makes her vulnerable.

Kravitz doesn’t have Lup’s inherent ability for sympathy, but he had a specialization in the Red Room, and years of training in torture and interrogation left him with a skill set that still comes in handy. Obviously he’s not going to _torture_ Taako, but interrogating him? That seems like fair game. He’s talked to Barry individually about Taako — his behaviour and apparent mental state — and he’s seen security footage of Taako, Lup, and Barry in Lup’s apartment. It’s not enough for him to make a call one way or the other, on whether the Soldier is faking this.e

Kravitz is _very_ good at his job. The best interrogations are ones where the person being interrogated doesn’t realize they’re giving up information, where they only realize what’s happening when it’s too late for them to walk it back. The Soldier responds primarily to Lup. It’s clear from that that she’s the one at the centre of whatever mission he’s on. That’s easy enough to work with. Choosing not to question the Soldier’s cover seems like the right call too. Also easy to do. Lup and Barry aren’t questioning that he’s really Taako right now.

Kravitz promised Lup he wouldn’t be a dick to Taako anymore. He’s going to say sorry.

Kravitz lets himself into Lup’s apartment. Taako is lying on Lup’s couch, curled up under a blanket. Kravitz closes the door hard enough to wake him and watches the Soldier jerk upright, eyes darting around the room and then settling on Kravitz.

The Soldier frowns, eyes locked on Kravitz. “Where’s Lup?”

“Training,” Kravitz says. “She hasn’t gotten out of the Tower since you got here. She’s got a lot of energy to burn off.” He holds his hands out at his sides, body language projecting caution. The perfect interrogation makes the subject feel like they have the power. It puts them at ease. It should feel like a conversation. Torture got you the information you wanted, but not necessarily the truth. Even the Red Room saw it as a last resort. “I’m sorry I woke you. I was hoping we could talk.”

“Talk?” Taako repeats. He pushes backthe blanket he’s sitting under, but doesn’t move from the couch.

“I want to apologize,” Kravitz says. “I’m sure being locked in a concrete box when you showed up here to see your sister wasn’t what you expected.”

Taako shrugs his good shoulder. “You were trying to protect Lup. I get it.”

Kravitz nods. “She’s my friend and you’re… you _were_ the Winter Soldier. I wanted to make sure you weren’t here to hurt her.”

The Soldier frowns. “I would _never_ hurt Lup,” he says. “Lup’s — I’m here to protect her. I don’t know what you think you know about me, but I’m not working for the Hunger.”

“Anymore,” Kravitz says, because the Soldier’s smart enough to know Kravitz wouldn’t let him off the hook that easily. “But you did, once, and she was your mission.” Kravitz reaches for the hem of his shirt, slowly, telegraphing his movements. He watches Taako tense up on the couch, obviously reading Kravitz as a potential threat. Good.

Kravitz lifts his shirt just high enough to show off the raised scar on his stomach. “I don’t know if you remember this,” he says. “I’ve read your files. The Hunger wiped you after missions.”

Taako’s eyes are fixed on the scar. He glances up at Kravitz’s face. “I did that?”

“I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of a war zone. The Hunger didn’t want him to make it out alive.” Kravitz raises an eyebrow. “You shot through me.”

Taako tilts his head to the side. “Oh.”

 _Oh_ , like it’s nothing. _Oh_ , like the shot wouldn’t have killed anyone else. Like it wouldn’t have been a slow and painful death, bleeding out from a gut shot in the middle of nowhere. Kravitz has scars from when he was a kid — from training and his first few missions — but the angry line on his stomach is the only scar that’s stuck with him since the Red Room stuck a needle in his thigh and injected him with something that burned like a fever through his veins.

Kravitz drops his shirt. “I survived,” he says. “But you can see why I was… concerned, when you arrived. Lup loves you. Lup wants you here. She’d do anything to get her brother back.”

Taako looks away and that’s — interesting. The Soldier was always good at pretending to be a person, better than Kravitz. It’s hard to tell if this tell for what _could_ be shame is an affectation or not. “I know she does,” Taako says. “I just wanna make her happy. Look, I get it — you wanna protect her. Me too.”

“Is that why you asked Barry to fix your arm?” Kravitz asks. “Hard to protect her when you can’t use it. I know he thinks he can get it working soon.”

Taako’s body is tense on the couch. He shrugs again. “Lup wants the arm working. It’ll make her feel better if I can, you know, _do_ shit.”

Framing it as something Lup wants and not something _he’s_ after is smart. “All Lup really wants is for you to be happy.”

Taako looks at him again and there’s determination in his gaze this time. He looks more like himself — more like the Soldier. “Lup being happy is more important,” he says. “I’m here for her. Are you done with your interrogation yet?”

Kravitz doesn’t flinch because of course the Winter Soldier caught on to what he was doing. He’s _the Winter Soldier_ and Kravitz wasn’t as subtle as he’d original intended to be. “I’m here for Lup too.”

“Sure,” Taako says. “You think I’m going to kill her. I’m not.”

Kravitz is pretty sure he’s telling the truth, is the thing. He’s pretty sure the Soldier _doesn’t_ want to hurt Lup. He’s pretty sure the Soldier’s not working for the Hunger anymore.

Kravitz has no idea what Taako does and doesn’t remember.

“You worked for the Soviets before you were transferred to the American branch of the Hunger,” he says. “I’ve read your file. You were involved with the Red Room.”

There’s no hint of recognition on Taako’s face. Not even a flick of his eyes to indicate the name is familiar.

Taako frowns at him. “I don’t know what that is.”

Kravitz knows... what? That Taako’s first priority is Lup. He knew that before. That he wants the arm fixed. That’s not new either. Taako seems to be telling the truth about not working for the Hunger anymore. Some of his memory loss probably _is_ real.

It’s not his most successful interrogation, but even if he _could_ resort to torture here — if he wanted to, and he doesn’t — he doubts the Winter Soldier would break. The Red Room taught Kravitz exactly how it felt when someone broke bones in your fingers and stuck needles under you skin to try and make you betray your homeland. After the injection, they got more creative with their training. They broke him down so nobody else would be able to break him later. Conditioned him. It was hard to override, harder to forget. The Winter Soldier was around longer and has been through more. Kravitz is an expert at what he does — one of the best in the world. The Winter Soldier wouldn’t break.

Kravitz smiles, warm and open. “I’m glad we could talk,” he says. “Clear the air.”

Taako doesn’t smile back. “You don’t trust me. That’s fine. I don’t mind if you don’t trust me. You’re just looking out for Lup.” He looks away from Kravitz, lying back down on the couch. “I wouldn’t trust me either.”

“You’re the Winter Soldier,” Kravitz says.

Taako shakes his head. “Nah,” he says, smothering an obviously fake yawn with his right hand. “I don’t know what the fuck I am, but it’s not that. If you don’t mind, my dude, I need a nap.”

Kravitz leaves the apartment mentally replaying their conversation, picking it apart. Looking for signs of the Soldier in the way Taako acted, in his body language and the tells he telegraphed. Kravitz leaves feeling like he missed something important.

#

Barry’s first instinct, when Taako shows up at the door to his lab, is to look for Lup behind him. He’s not even sure how Taako knew where the lab _was_ , but maybe it’s like Kravitz keeps saying — Taako was the Winter Soldier He’s got years of training doing things like intuiting where a lab might be kept.

That, or he just poked around until he found it.

“Hey bud,” Barry says. “You looking for Lup? I think she’s —”

“Training, I know.” Taako’s eyes dart around the lab, taking it in like he’s casing the place. Barry’s been doing his best not to put Taako through the ordeal of being in a lab again. Even the stuff before Taako fell from the train — what Lup’s told him about the operating table she rescued her brother from — seems like more than enough to put someone off being in a lab again for life.

Barry gets that. He was kidnapped and kept in a cave for weeks.

Taako takes a few steps into the room. “I was looking for you.”

“Oh. Uh, cool. If you give me a minute to wrap up here we could go back to Lup’s place? Or there’s communal space too. Have you seen TV yet? We could watch some TV.” Barry’s got no idea why Taako would want to spend time with him. Barry’s brought him pastries, sure, but he’s also brought him a couple panic attacks. Doesn’t exactly scream _good company_ to Barry.

“Nah, this is fine,” Taako says, and walks over to sit at one of the metal tables Barry has around the large room. “Probably better to be in here.”

“Oh? What for?”

Taako turns his attention to Barry, gave intense. His eyes are the same as Lup’s. It’s a stupid thing to notice — of _course_ they’re the same — but Lup and Taako are so different it’s easy for Barry to forget they’re identical.

In the newsreel footage and the movies Barry’s seen, from back in the day, the differences weren’t as obvious. His father had talked about Lup and Taako — about Captain America — sometimes, and said he’d never been able to tell them apart. He said nobody could, if the twins didn’t want them to.

Barry can’t imagine not being able to pick Lup out of a crowd. He can’t imagine not knowing her immediately.

“I need you to fix the arm,” Taako says. “I’m useless without it.”

Barry’s confident he can fix Taako’s arm. He’s gone over the scans. He’s made hologram mockups and practiced on them. He told Lup, too, that he’s pretty sure he could get through it in under twenty minutes, but he doesn’t want= to put Taako through another run at the arm until he’s ready.

Barry hesitates. “Taako… you hated it when I opened your arm.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Taako says, instantly dismissive. “Lup wants the arm fixed. I can’t exactly protect anybody without it.”

Barry’s not sure pointing out that _Captain America_ doesn’t need protection would go over well here. Lup _did_ crash a plane into the Arctic Ocean once. And there’s the whole… running into battle armed with just a shield and her fists thing. “Okay, do you... uh, should we wait for her? Do you want Lup here?”

Taako’s face is impassive, the way Kravitz’s gets when he’s all business. “No,” he says. “Lup’s concerned for her — for my comfort. She doesn’t want to watch this happen.”

“She might want to be here for _you_ though, bud.”

“I’m good. Let’s get this over with.” Taako puts his arm up on the table. He doesn’t look comfortable or relaxed or like he wants to be there. He looks like a statue settling into place. Maybe Taako’s _right_ and the way to do this is to just… start now and get the whole thing done at once. Maybe the only way out is through.

Barry takes a deep breath. If Taako’s worked himself up for this to happen now, then it should happen now. He doesn’t want to draw this out and put Taako through anymore hell than he’s already been through. “Right. Yeah. We can get it over with. Just — Dummy, bring me the kit I was working with yesterday, please?” He tugs a stool over beside Taako. “I… I gotta warn you, Taako. This is gonna hurt. I’ve got a freezing spray I could —”

“No,” Taako says, fast and firm and loud, and then he winces, like he hadn’t meant for it to come out sounding quite so harsh.

Barry raises his hands in surrender. “Yeah, no. That’s fair,” he says. “I didn’t think it would go over well, but I wanted to offer. No spray. It, uh... do you want to know what I’ll be doing?”

Taako glances at him and at his metal arm, then looks away, watching Dum-E wheel across the lab. He shrugs his right shoulder.

“Well… Okay, well, I need to redo some of the wiring in your arm. It’s disconnected from the… the stuff they plugged your nerves into. That’s why it’s not working, but I don’t think it’ll be… a comfortable experience. I, uh, I think if you gave me some time I could come up with a better design for the arm? One that hurts less. Works better, for longer. This one seems like it needs calibrating fairly often, which… I mean, I could just walk you through the schematics and you could probably figure it out, you know? I could train you to maintain it, but that’s your body and your call.”

“I just need the arm to work,” Taako says, still looking away. Barry guesses that’s fair. He doesn’t even like looking when he gets _blood_ drawn and he’s about to open part of Taako up.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m gonna go as fast as possible. You can tell me to stop. You can shove me across the room if you want. I’m _pretty_ hearty, even without the armour, no matter what Lup and Kravitz say.” Barry takes the toolkit from Dum-E and gives him a pat. “If Lup’s mad we did this without her, I’m absolutely blaming you, bud.”

Taako twitches in place, but nods. “Understood.”

Sometimes people can’t tell when Barry’s joking and it seems like maybe Taako’s not in the _mood_ for jokes about Lup being pissed at them, but drawing this out to explain himself seems like a bad call. Taako’s obviously uncomfortable and… well, it’s not like Barry hasn’t done some fucked up stuff he _hated_ because he had to before. He’s replaced the core in his chest multiple times alone, in his lab, with only his semi-intelligent robot assistants for company.

Not a smart move. Not something he’d enjoyed. Not something Lup lets him do anymore.

He gets where Taako’s coming from, wanting to get this over with. Barry turns on his soldering iron. “What Lup doesn’t know can’t hurt her, right?” he asks, opening his toolbox and pulling out a mini-pry bar. “I’m gonna take the panels off.”

After a jerky nod from Taako, Barry pops them off. It goes quicker this time than it did the first. He’s practiced on holograms, but this is _Taako_ — this is a person and he’s gonna have to try and make these repairs as fast and accurate as possible so they don’t have to do this again any time soon.

Barry takes a breath and settles his shoulders.

“Okay,” he says. “Try, uh, try looking at the ceiling and counting maybe. I’m gonna go as fast as I can. I know you hate this.”

Taako’s arm is an intriguing mess — a mixture of eras and skill-levels and possible alien tech all culminating in one of the most complex bits of engineering Barry’s come across and Barry made himself a _robot suit_.

He picks up the soldering iron and solder so he can start rewiring the parts of Taako’s arm that Lup managed to jostle out of place.

Barry’s dying to make Taako something better than the mess he’s got hanging off him right now — lighter, faster, stronger — but _removing_ the arm would involve a fuckload of trust that Taako definitely hasn’t got in him yet. Maybe one day. For now, Barry can work on fixing what Taako’s got.

“We can have more Tokyo Bananas after this,” Barry says, eyes on his work. Taako is utterly still. It’s a little unsettling. “I’ve never tried them frozen, but when I was a kid I used to eat frozen cream puffs all the time and those were good. Shit, I should buy some. I bet you’d like ‘em too.”

He sets the soldering iron down, moves on to the next wire. “You’re doing good, Taako. You okay?”

No answer.

Barry glances up from his work and Taako is — blank. Not the projected blankness of a spy controlling their emotions, but a dead-eyed _nothing_ that says nobody’s home. Empty.

It is, objectively, a _really fucking bad sign._

“Fuck,” Barry says, and turns his attention back to the arm because if this is going to be bad every time they try to touch the arm, why prolong it? Barry can fix it and then he can work on helping _Taako_ — something that’ll probably involved going and getting Lup to come and snap her brother out of it because Barry’s _not_ the comfort guy. Not with someone he doesn’t know, and he definitely doesn’t know Taako.

He’d like to though. He _wants_ to, but Taako’s not really in a make new friends kind of place right now. Taako’s just a guy who wants his sister to be happy and _Barry_ wants Lup to be happy too, so he gets that. He and Taako will probably get along, when he’s gotten a chance to recover a little and he’s been able to figure out what he wants to do now.

Barry breathes in deep and tries not to have a panic attack of his own as he fumbles his pliers and almost drops them inside Taako’s arm.

Taako doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move at all. Lup’s gonna kill him when she finds out about this.

Barry picks up the soldering iron again, fixing the snapped wires, zeroing in on the routine of fixing a circuit because he could do this in his sleep. If he doesn’t think about this as rewiring Taako’s nerves, he can get into the zone of just fixing an appliance and speed through it.

Taako’s handlers probably thought about it the same way — just a machine to be repaired between uses — but Barry’s trying not to dwell on that. He’s learned too much about the Winter Soldier program, reading the files Kravitz handed off to Lup. He knows too much about the men who did this to Taako. Barry knows _himself_ too, knows he’s not capable of the shit they did to Taako, but he knows people — other engineers, scientists, his father — who he could see turning like that, chasing their own curiosity and self-importance to some dark place where they turned a person into an intellectual exercise: Can we turn him? Can we use him? Can we replace the arm? Can we control him?

Barry’s heart is pounding hard in his chest like he just ran a marathon when he finishes fixing the insides of Taako’s arm. He turns the soldering iron off and puts the plates back in place. He watches as movement ripples through the arm, all the plates shifting and whirring as everything reconnects, seemingly in freshly repaired, working order.

“Thank fuck,” Barry says, and then rolls his stool in front of Taako, reaching out to touch his right shoulder. “Taako? Hey, bud? We’re all done here. We’re good. We’ve got —”

Taako’s metal hand closes around his throat, an unyielding grip that cuts Barry’s air off instantly, squeezes hard enough that Barry knows he’s gonna have bruises and _shit_ he should have been more careful.

Taako’s eyes are wide and wild and there’s no way Barry’s the person he’s seeing right now.

“T-taak —” Barry chokes out, kicking Taako’s shin. He doesn’t want to get the armour out unless he has to. He’ll register as a threat. “S’o-okay.”

Taako blinks and his eyes focus on Barry and then he’s across the room and on top of a table, like a scared cat, staring at his hand in horror.

Jesus, Barry should have known this was a bad idea.

Barry rubs his throat and tries to speak, but it comes out as a croak. He pauses, tries again. “Taako,” he says, voice rough. “Taako, it’s okay. I’m okay. Not your fault. Should have stopped. Didn’t want to draw this out. You’re good. I’m good. It’s okay.”

Taako flexes his metal fingers, folds his left arm against his chest and just — stares at Barry like he doesn’t understand.

“Should I get Lup?” Barry asks. “I could ask JARVIS to grab her wherever she is.”

“Lup,” Taako says, his voice ragged. “She’ll — she wanted the arm fixed.”

Barry nods slowly. If talking about Lup is what’ll snap Taako out of this, he can do that. “Yeah, bud. Lup’ll be thrilled that you’ve got your arm back. She’s gonna give me hell for it, but I, uh, probably deserve that, huh?”

Taako just stares at him from on top of the table, unmoving.

“Okay,” Barry says. “Okay, let’s — let’s go grab those Tokyo Bananas, huh? I definitely promised you a snack for sitting through me being an idiot with the arm. We can see if they’re as good frozen as cream puffs. Sound good?”

Taako nods once, a jerky up and down bob of his head.

“Cool.” Barry gets up from the stool. He doesn’t want to say that something frozen sounds good for his throat right now, but… something frozen sounds good for his throat right now. He knows he’s going to have a bruise on it the shape of Taako’s hand. He can feel, still, the places where Taako’s fingertips pressed into his skin.

“Come on,” Barry says, and waits for Taako to hop down from the table — fluid and easy, sticking the landing like a gymnast — to head out of the lab. “I put some in the communal kitchen. Let’s raid the freezer and see what we think.”

Lup’s gonna be _furious_ with him. Kravitz will probably misinterpret this as a sign that Taako’s secretly trying to kill them all. Barry deserves some frozen Japanese snack cakes as fuel to sit through both of them lecturing him on almost getting himself killed and fucking Taako up even worse than he already was.

#

Lup’s on the way back from the gym when she runs into Barry. She starts to smile, but her eyes catch on the distinctly hand-shaped red mark on his neck and the smile drops away. “ _Barry_ ,” she says. “What happened? Are you _okay?_ ”

They’re both superheroes, sure, but Barry wears armor as Iron Man. He doesn’t usually _get_ hit like this.

Barry looks up at her, a weary, sheepish smile on his face. “Hey,” he croaks. “I’m okay, hon. Don’t, uh, don’t be mad, but Taako and I… fixed his arm.”

“You _what?_ ” That paints the soon-to-be-bruise in a whole new light. That’s something _Taako_ did and that — Lup refuses to believe Taako did it on _purpose —_ she saw him the first two times they tried to look at his arm — but it still leaves her shaken. “Is _he_ okay?”

“He’s… he’s okay,” Barry says. “I don’t want to say good, but he’s recovering. He, uh, he knew you’d stop us if you were there and I think he just wanted it over with. He dissociated pretty badly and when I tried to snap him out of it, he lashed out. It’s not his fault. He stopped as soon as I got his attention again. I should have been more careful.”

Lup wants to hit something. She wants to go back to the gym and break a heavy bag because her brother is _so fucking not okay_ it’s unbelievable. Because the Hunger _did this_ to him — fucked him up beyond belief, made him unable to tell the difference between someone trying to help and someone hurting him.

She wants to put on her uniform and go burn down every last fucking Hunger base out there and she _can’t_ right now because she can’t leave Taako in the tower alone — not when he did this _for her_ , apparently. Not when he insisted Barry fix him _without her there_ so she wouldn’t make them stop.

“God dammit, Taako.” Lup’s pissed at both of them, too. Not as pissed as she is at the Hunger, but _yeah_ — they’re in the fucking doghouse.

“He’s in your apartment,” Barry says. “We ate some frozen Tokyo Bananas — pretty good, actually — and when he seemed calmer I, uh, I left to look for you. I’ve been thinking… Lup, maybe we should call Merle? He’s an Avenger. He was a medical doctor, before the whole Sorcerer Supreme thing. It could be good to have him on this.”

Calling Merle is probably a good idea. Lup can’t really focus on logistics right now. Not if Taako was so shaken up he _attacked_ Barry.

Lup takes a deep breath. She lets it out slowly.

“Babe,” she says. “Babe, go put some ice on your neck and take a couple ibuprofen. Have some tea. I am _pissed_ , but I need to go check on my idiot brother before I can yell at you and check your bruise.”

“That’s fair,” says Barry, after a beat. “I’ll, uh, I’ll go to my apartment. Call me if you need anything and I’ll be down in a second.”

“I will,” says Lup, and steps close to press a kiss to the corner of Barry’s mouth. He and Taako are idiots, but she loves them both. “Go _rest_.”

“I will,” Barry promises, and they part ways.

Lup clenches her trembling hands into fists at her sides and walks down the hall to her apartment. When she opens the door, Taako’s sitting on the couch, staring straight ahead, unmoving.

Lup shuts the door and Taako starts, head jerking in her direction. His eyes are wide and he looks exhausted. She knows he hasn’t been sleeping well. He passes out whenever he sits somewhere comfortable for too long. She hadn’t realized just how poorly he was doing, but the fear etched into the lines of his face now makes t _obvious_.

“Barry told me you guys got your arm fixed,” she says. “And that it didn’t go so well.”

Taako lifts his metal arm and wiggles his fingers at her. “It’s functioning.”

Lup presses her lips together because this isn’t — nothing about this feels _right_ and it hasn’t since Taako got back. She doesn’t know how to fix that. Maybe Barry is right and they need Merle to come be a doctor. Maybe she needs to stop hoping being _near_ Taako is going to magically fix everything. “Yeah, that’s cool, T, but I don’t really give a shit about the arm.” She pauses. Tries to do some — some fucking deep breathing to calm down because she _shouldn’t_ yell at Taako. Yelling at Taako would be a really shitty thing to do right now.

But _God_ is she mad. She needs to be, or she’s gonna cry, and that would be even worse.

“That’s not — I’m glad you arm’s fixed. I’m glad you can _use_ it again and like — yeah, that’s good, but babe, you _choked Barry out_.” Lup walks over and drops onto the coffee table in front of Taako so he has to look her right in the eye while she calls him on his bullshit. “You freaked the _fuck_ out and you didn’t tell him to stop and I _told you_ not to push yourself about this, didn’t I? I care a hell of a fuckin’ lot more about _you_ than anything else and you’re not — you’re not _good_ , Taako, so don’t give me that bullshit. If you were good, you wouldn’t _attack_ people. I’m your _sister_. I _love_ you. And I just — you need to take better fuckin’ _care_ of yourself.”

Lup reaches out and grabs both of Taako’s hands in hers, squeezes them even though she’s not sure whether or not he can feel anything with the metal hand. “I _know_ you think you’re doing a good job at pretending and not making me worry, but we’re _twins_ , Taako. We’re Taako and Lup. I see through you. I know you need time. I know the Hunger was awful to you and you’ve been through… I can’t even fuckin’ _imagine_ what you’ve been through, but just… stop pretending, okay? All this stuff you’ve been doing? The bottling up? The fronting? You don’t need to do it. I just want _you_ , Taako. I just want my brother back.”

Taako stares at her like he doesn’t know what to say to that.If Taako were okay, he’d probably tell her to fuck off. He’d be an asshole because he brother is _the worst_. Her brother is fucking awful and she loves him more than life itself. Lup _knows_ what he went through is going to change him, but that fundamentally contrary part of Taako? That stubborn core of his identity? That doesn’t feel like something _anyone_ should be able to take away from. They don’t have the fuckin’ _right_ to.

“Babe? Talk to me.”

“I needed to get the arm fixed,” Taako says, voice hollow. “I’m useless without it, Lup. You were — you wanted it fixed.”

Lup relaxes, just a little. It’s a hint of Taako still being a stubborn shithead. She’ll take it.

“Yeah,” she says, “but I didn’t want you to _ruin_ yourself or kill my boyfriend doing it. We have lots of time. I know I keep pushing you, but we have all the time in the fuckin’ world now so we can take it. _You_ can take as long as you need to to get through shit. I know it’s probably frustrating as all hell, but _fuck_ , Taako. The Hunger had you for _seventy fuckin’ years_. You’ve been here a couple weeks. You don’t need to push yourself that hard.”

“I’m good,” Taako says, even though it’s obviously a lie. “Taako’s fuckin’ peachy over here. Don’t worry about me.”

“That’s _bullshit_ , Taako,” Lup snaps, before she can help herself. She closes her eyes and tamps down on her temper. “Fuck. Sorry. That’s not — I’m not mad at you. I mean, I am, a _little_ , but… you know. Mostly it’s at the Hunger because _fuck_ them, right? Fuck them for doing this to you.”

She lets go of Taako’s hands so she can run her fingers through her hair. “I’m going to light them the fuck up when we get through this.”

She looks back at Taako, who’s just _watching_ her — watching like he’s waiting for a cue so he knows what to do next. He’s too pale and losing weight, despite eating mostly cake and sweets, and he’s got heavy, dark circles under his eyes. He’s exhausted and he’s had a long, hard day and Lup’s just… piling more shit on his shoulders for him to carry around.

She _really_ needs to go hit something and get these feelings out. Maybe find Kravitz and convince him to spar with her again so she can throw him around. Kravitz is like a fucking cat. He always lands on his feet.

“You look like you’re about to pass out,” she says, giving Taako a tired smile. “Tired?”

Taako shrugs. At least both shoulders move now. He looks less like a wounded bird.

“Take a nap, babe. We can talk more when you wake up, yeah? I’ll make something good for dinner. Bug Barry for steaks, maybe. Get real fancy.” If they’re going to have a serious talk about Taako’s mental state and maybe bringing Merle in to look him over, expensive food seems like the least she can do. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

She stands and ruffles his hair, which Taako _should_ give her shit about, but he doesn’t — he just blinks up at her, eyelids heavy, then leans back against the couch and passes the fuck out. Like he’s just been waiting for _permission_ to spend a couple hours napping on the couch.

Maybe he has been. It’s another reason to call Merle and to go let out her frustration somewhere Taako won’t see it.

Lup walks into the bedroom to get him a blanket. They’ll figure everything out when he wakes up and is rested. She’ll ply him with expensive food and make him fucking _talk_ to her, for once. Taako is hurt, but he’s home, and he’s going to get better.

#

He doesn’t like to sleep. When he sleeps, it comes with dreams that feel like memories. He doesn’t _need_ sleep anyway. Not the way other people do. He can go days without it. It slows him down and makes Lup look at him with poorly hidden concern, but it’s a small price to pay in exchange for not dealing with the spike of worry that shoots through him every time he wakes up from the dreams, and especially when he wakes up and Lup’s not there.

Lup is his mission now. He found her and he’ll protect her and he’ll _listen_ to her, only she doesn’t always give orders the way he’d like her to. She’ll talk in circles and leave him to figure out what it is she wants. She’s a different handler than the ones he had before, with the Hunger. She does his hair and she makes him pancakes. She lets him have butter and syrup on them.

Sometimes he watches her cooking and it’s like he’s seeing it once, twice, three times over — images laid on top of each other in his mind. Lup now, her smile not quite reaching her eyes, making plain pancakes and setting a stack in front of him. Another Lup, another day — smaller, in old clothes, rolling her eyes and letting him hip-check her out of the way, his hands but not his cutting thin slices of apple into the batter. Lup on the other side of an open fire, watching like a hawk as he turns sad little pancakes over in an old frying pan, a bunch of uniformed strangers who aren’t strangers at her side.

He doesn’t like it. The images are like the dreams he’s trying to avoid, like the words that leave his mouth sometimes when he’s not thinking — the turns of phrase that make Lup’s smile quirk into something real. The comments that make Barold Hallwinter laugh. That made the Reaper broadcast nothing but distrust talking to him. Having flashes like this doesn’t fit with who he’s supposed to be.

More of the time he knows who he is. It’s easy to know, because he’s not anyone.

The thing is, he’s starting to think he might have been Taako, once. He’s starting to think it’s _not_ just programming and the stuff he learned from the museum and that’s _dangerous_. He doesn’t like the Reaper, but he was right. Lup shouldn’t have let the man who was once the Winter Soldier in so easily. She’s not going to tell him to go, though, which means he should leave. _Especially_ if he’s starting to believe his own lie.

Lup is good and special and deserves to have what she wants. She deserves her brother back. But that doesn’t make him Taako. He can pretend and he can be Taako _for_ her, but believing it himself is unthinkable. He’s not the person Lup wants him to be.

He really fucking wishes she were clearer about who _that_ person is. Maybe if she didn’t leave every time he fell asleep, he’d be able to rest more. Be able the think more clearly. Be closer to an answer.

But she does, so he doesn’t sleep and he doesn’t dream. He spends long nights watching the steady rise and fall of Lup’s chest and tries not to think about other, colder nights when he did this. Nights they huddled together in a single cot in their aunt’s tenament. Or later, living on the kindness of strangers, when they put the couch cushions down on the floor and whispered about what they’d do when they finally had enough money for their own apartment. He doesn’t think about enlisting because _someone_ had to. He doesn’t think about how angry Lup was when he came home and told her. He doesn’t think about basic or the Hallwinter Expo or being out on the frontlines. He doesn’t think about the sniper training the government wouldn’t let him write home about — wouldn’t let him tell _Lup_ about until she was on the frontlines too. Until they were sharing the Captain America costume and title — him for the missions that needed a creative solution and a deft hand in the dark, her for the ones that needed raw power and the kind of leader people were willing to follow into hell. Doesn’t think about —

He doesn’t think about a lot of things.

He knows what Lup dreams about because sometimes in her sleep she says “ _Taako_ ” and everytime she does he wants to reach out and grab her hand and tell her that he’s there, but it feels like a lie. He’s not the one Lup wants — if he was, or if he was _better_ at pretending to be him, then she wouldn’t have those dreams and she wouldn’t look at him the way she does. He wouldn’t keep waking up alone.

It’s a circle — a snake eating its own tail. He’s not Taako, but Lup wants him to be, so he wants to be, so he’s starting to think _maybe_ — but every time he fools himself into thinking _yes, I’m him_ , Lup reminds him that he’s not.

All she wants is her brother back, but Taako is dead.

Lup tells him to take a nap, so he does. It’s easier to obey then to deal with the echoes of memories — or programming — in his head brought on by Hallwinter repairing his arm. It’s easier than thinking about the Reaper saying he was going to end up hurting Lup.

He falls asleep in the living room, sitting up on the couch, and Lup is there — Lup is there in the broken down couch in their shitty, drafty apartment. It’s late as fuck and they just got back from the nightclub. The shady one down by the docks that lets him and Lup in even though they’re too young. The owner doesn’t give a shit and the place has plenty of turn over — lots of sailors passing through — so it’s good for a grift. They flirt a little and play up their youth until they get dealt into a hand of cards. Then they fleece everyone stupid enough to bet against them.

They’re poor, but they’re smart and he has no moral compunctions about not starving to death.

They’re sitting on the shitty couch he sleeps on more often than not, huddled together for warmth because it’s always fucking _freezing_ and Lup hands him a hunk of bread to go with the bowl of onion and bean soup in his hands. It’s winter and things are rough, but with the money they made tonight they’ll eat better tomorrow.

“Sometimes I feel bad for ‘em, Taako” Lup says. “Then I think about how they woulda taken _our_ money if we hadn’t got theirs first.”

He laughs, too loud and too hard. “We got nothin’ to feel bad about,” he says, dipping his bread into the soup. “Not our fault they weren’t born with the brains God gave a fuckin’ mouse.”

“Oh, Soldier,” says a man he recognizes as one of his handlers — there’s a smile on his face and nothing behind his eyes, no soul. “You talk about someone else’s mind as if you have one of your own when we both know that’s not true. You’re malfunctioning. Let us help.”

And suddenly he’s not in his and Lup’s shitty one-room apartment anymore. Suddenly he’s in The Chair and he’s strapped down and there’s something being shoved into his mouth — the bread, soaked with bean soup, dripping down his throat and making him feel like he’s about to choke. He remembers doing that. Pouring water into someone’s mouth to make them feel like they were drowning. He remembers having it done to him, to teach him the proper technique. To make sure he understood how effective it would be.

The headpiece is fastened. The man turns to the technician behind him — Lup, smiling her false smile. “We’ll fix him. We’ll find a better candidate for your brother. Apologies for the issues with the current calibration,” he says. “Turn it on.”

Lup flips the switch and he wakes up _thrashing_ — wakes up to the weight of a blanket over him that feels like being strapped down, with a scream of protest lodged in his throat and Lup _gone_. Wakes up _alone_ , again, like he _always_ wakes up because his mind is so fucking warped he can’t — there’s nothing —

The Hunger stripped him of fucking _everything_ and now it’s trying to take Lup from him too. Lup, who’s hopeful and sad and who probably goes to see her boyfriend while he’s sleeping because when else can she do that, but who _leaves him alone_ all the same. Who’s come back every time so far, but maybe won’t, one day. Who’ll maybe let the Reaper do whatever it is he wants to do — question him more thoroughly, take him apart. Make him feel even more like he’s drowning than he already is.

Lup, who would _never_ fucking hand him back over to the Hunger. Not in a million years. Lup, who wouldn’t let the Reaper touch him either because she’s Captain America and she’s his _fucking sister_.

His sister, because he’s her brother. Not for pretend. Not in the past. Now and in the future, Lup is _right_. He has a name. A history. An identity. He’s not an asset or the Winter Soldier — he’s himself. He’s Taako.

Taako doesn’t think. He throws off the blanket, and he runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all your comments y'all <3 we read all of them and we love hearing about what you think is coming next!
> 
> If you like our fic, please please head over to tumblr to [see this _movie poster style_ art](http://terezis.tumblr.com/post/181728314689) Allison commissioned from Terezis of Taako and Kravitz. It's amazing. Also, Ginny is the one who turned it into a movie poster. Please commission her. She's great!
> 
> You can find us on tumblr too, where we're [@anonymousAlchemist](anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [@marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)! We'd love to hear from you!


	14. Into the Dead Lands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: The second section of this chapter contains suicidal ideation from the narrator's perspective. Please take care of yourself while reading.
> 
> This chapter also contains more gore than previous chapters. This is a friendly reminder to be mindful of the general fic tags.

The footage of Taako leaving Hallwinter Tower makes Kravitz want to hit Barry, but Barry’s throat is a rainbow of bruises already and Lup obviously isn’t in the mood to deal with Kravitz pointing out that he’d _warned_ them this was going to happen. Kravitz _knew_ Taako was still the Winter Soldier and now he’s got a functional arm, he’s out in the world, and they don’t have eyes on him.

It’s a shitty thing to be right about.

Barry rewinds the footage and plays it from the beginning. They watch Taako leaving Lup’s apartment; Taako walking to the elevator and pushing the down button; Taako waiting while JARVIS informs him that, unfortunately, he’ll have to be escorted to the lower floors of the tower; Taako walking to the stairwell, opening the door, and disappearing inside.

The cameras in the stairwell don’t cover as much. Taako passes by them, not in a rush, just walking casually down to the lobby, where the footage picks up again.

That’s a bigger fuck you than anything else, really. The Soldier didn’t even bother going to the parking garage and trying for subtlety. He was so certain he wouldn’t be stopped he walked out into the busy lobby of Hallwinter Tower, past the security desk, past Hallwinter Industries and ex-SHIELD employees, and out the front door.

Kravitz presses his hands together in front of his mouth, trying to calm himself. Lup is next to him, silent and tense. “Barry,” he says, voice mild and pleasant. Barry flinches at the tone. “ _Why_ were the stairs unlocked?”

“It’s — fire code,” Barry says. “You can’t lock the stairs. They’re our emergency exit and they’d be locked for _everyone_ on the floor. I have a suit. Lup’s Captain America. You’re…”

“I’m a highly trained spy,” Kravitz says, raising an eyebrow at Barry. “Do you think I can’t get from here to the ground floor if you _lock a door_ on me?”

Barry hesitates, eyes darting to the screen. “I mean, that’s — so’s Taako. So…”

“So if he _hadn’t_ been able to just walk down the stairs and out the front door, we might have had more time to catch up with him,” Kravitz says. “Because _we_ could have used the elevator while he crawled through the ducts. An alarm going off would’ve alerted us faster than JARVIS did.”

“He could have just broken the handle off the door,” Lup says, eyes still fixed on the screen. “Even without the arm, he’s still got super strength. _God_ , Taako, where are you _going_?”

“I’ve got JARVIS working on finding feeds from traffic cams and any wireless security cameras in the area he can tap into. He’s even looking on social media, Lup. We’ll find him,” Barry says, reaching out to touch her arm. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Lup doesn’t look convinced. She’s staring at the last frame of the security footage, at Taako dressed in her sweats and a Captain America hoodie, exiting the building, like something about her brother’s back is going to answer all the questions Kravitz can read on her face. The desperate _why_ the set of her shoulders is broadcasting.

Kravitz knows exactly why. That’s not Lup’s brother; it’s the Winter Soldier. He doesn’t know what the Soldier’s next move is going to be though. After talking to him, he’s willing to admit that the Soldier probably isn’t planning on going back to the Hunger, but obviously he didn’t want to stay here and keep pretending to be Lup’s brother so... maybe this is it. Maybe this is the last time any of them is going to _see_ the Soldier. Maybe he’ll just… disappear.

The Winter Soldier could make a killing selling his services to the right people. No pun intended. Kravitz will have to keep feelers out.

“Babe?” Barry says, and Lup — snaps.

She whirls around and slams her fist in the wall, putting it straight through the insulation and the drywall on the other side. “Fuck!” She yanks her hand free, then kicks a dent into the wall underneath it. “ _Fuck!_ I can’t believe my idiot brother just up and fuckin’ _left_ on me like... like —” Her shoulders slump. “We could’ve _talked_ about this, Taako. What the _fuck_?”

Kravitz can’t believe what being friends with people has done to him. He reaches out to touch her arm, squeezing gently. “We’ll find him, Lup.”

She turns, pulling her arm free and glaring at him. “This is exactly what you thought would happen, isn’t it?” she asked. “Aren’t you happy about being right? Taako _left_ , and now he’s — he’s just _out there_ and he’s _not okay_ , Krav. He’s really fuckin’ not okay!”

Kravitz takes a step back and lets his face go blank. “I don’t take pleasure in you being hurt.”

Lup maintains the glare for about a half second before it just — melts off her face, leaving a lost look in its wake. “I know,” she says. “I know you don’t. Fuck. Sorry. I’m not —” She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “This isn’t your fault. I should have been paying closer attention. Maybe then I would have seen the signs.”

“Hey,” says Barry. “Maybe this isn’t anyone’s fault? I mean, except the Hunger’s. We don’t know what was going on in Taako’s mind. And Krav’s right, Lup. We’re gonna find him. I didn’t put a tracker in his arm and that one’s on me, but with surveillance tech these days? No problem. We can do this.”

Kravitz gives Barry a skeptical look. He relies too much on technology to solve his problems. “He’s — he _was_ the Winter Soldier, Barry. You think you’ll catch him on security cameras?”

There’s a ping from Barry’s computer and a photo appears on the monitor — Taako, disappearing down an alleyway.

The look on Barry’s face is _exceptionally_ smug. “Maybe we won’t catch everything, but we’ll catch enough,” he says. “I promise, Lup. We’ll find him.”

#

The easy part of leaving is this: Walk out the door and ignore the voice saying “Sir, are you sure you should be leaving?” in its crisp, cool mechanical tone because buddy he hasn’t been sure about anything in the last six months and before that everything was so _clear_ , and walk down the hallway and open the door and down down down the stairwell and out the door that says _EXIT_ into the lobby where all the businessmen and tourists are crisscrossing, where the receptionists are answering phones and nobody notices him because nobody notices him if he wants them not to notice him and it’s the sort of thing where sometimes he doesn’t feel real except he’s not real, except _Taako_ is real and he’s supposed to be Taako, but he’s not Lup’s brother, not the way she remembers, and the thought makes him sick to his stomach, and he needs to leave, and he’s walking out of Hallwinter Tower and — oh god, it’s _hot_ this afternoon, the sidewalks smell like sewage (Something familiar to this? Everything’s so _fucking_ familiar.) and he’s leaving, he needs air, and he still feels like he can’t breathe and the thoughts start winding down and it centers on —

The problem is that he's not Lup’s brother anymore. The problem is that she's still his sister.

It’s like a house of cards tumbling down, all his flimsy logic falling apart — what was he thinking, that he would _stay with Lup?_

Lup looks at him like he’s somebody, like he’s an “I.” Maybe he used to be an “I” but not anymore — I is for people and he is not a person. But now the static in his brain has cleared enough for him to make the connection — Captain America is his sister. He used to be Captain America. Captain America looked _so sad_ when he didn’t recognize his name.

No. It’s not his name anymore. Taako is a war hero and a brother. Taako is dead. Taako fell off a bridge into the snow and then he was — the asset, the Winter Soldier, the operative, the ghost story for ghost stories, the pointed gun, the rabid dog. Taako shot his last bullet into Lup’s stomach, bashed her face against the floor of the helicarrier, blood pooling under them and Lup looked up at him and said: “You are my heart,” and everything recalibrated.

He _understands_ now, in a way he wishes he didn’t. He can think about understanding.

She should have killed him. That would have been the sensible thing to do.

But Lup is never going to kill him. She’s never going to have the goddamn fuckin’ sense to put a bullet in his head. God, Lup always had no fucking sense — she got herself experimented on by the government, for chrissakes. _He_ got himself experimented on too, but that wasn’t on fuckin’ purpose, and oh, now he remembers that — the Hunger’s cells, him on the dissection table. Him on _so many_ tables, laid out like a slab of meat, gagged so he wouldn’t scream. Table and table and table and lab and lab and lab — the shiver-thunk of attaching his arm and “This won’t hurt a bit.” and laughter, and Hallwinter, outside of his armor, “this will hurt, I’m sorry.” and there’s so much _shit_ in his brain now, God, just all this _fuckin’_ stuff, like proximity drilled a hole in his head and poured it in — and doesn’t Lup know the only thing to do to a rabid dog is put it down?

Shit, he has to do everything himself around here. No, that’s not right, if the operative who used to be Taako puts himself down, Lup’s gonna find some way to blame herself for it, and then she’ll be sad. Stupid of her. She’d be better off without him. Best that he stays far away from the shiny tower and the shiny people inside it.

He wants to claw his way out of his own head. He wants to go back to Lup. He can’t go back to Lup. He’s going to _keep_ wanting. The novelty of the gnawing desire in the pit of his stomach has worn off now. It’s stupid to want to be around Lup and want her safety at the same time, like wanting right and left, like oil and water. He can have one or the other and he’d rather have Lup safe. He’s the biggest danger to her — he shot her, forgot her! He’s anybody’s windup toy — point him in the right direction and he’ll shoot.

Maybe he finds a hole in the world, a hideaway in the middle of nowhere, to lick his wounds and use his shiny new arm to put a gun to his head and a bullet in his brain the same way he would to any target: eliminated, target: eliminated — New York, Vienna, Leningrad, Tokyo — he’s got the best aim in the business, easy enough to rig something up, maybe make it look an accident, and maybe nobody, not even the Reaper, will find him.

And then that’s it: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Hunger’s wind-up hollow-eyed, tin soldier put to rest, except — the Hunger still isn’t dead.

And everything settles.

#

“You lost him,” the Director says, flat like the Kansas cornfields everyone thinks Captain America is from. That's what the comics claimed. Lup does her best not to bristle at Lucretia's tone. Beside her, Barry’s trying not to fidget. Lup knows he doesn't really want to be in this meeting, that he feels like his time would be better spent in his workshop working on finding Taako. Barry's also not used to being reprimanded. Lup is, but it’s still hard not to talk back. Kravitz, on the other hand, is perfectly still for the scolding, no expression to his face.

The way he can just turn everything off is still freaky.

Lucretia seems to be waiting for a reply. Or the video stream froze.

Barry breaks the silence. “Technically, he left. We didn’t _lose_ him.”

Lucretia frowns, her incredulity broadcast picture-perfect across the monitor in the living room. Lup's glad that she's not here in person. The Director has a _presence_. Lup gives up on not scowling. A day ago her brother was _here_ and _safe_ , and now he's gone and Lucretia is looking at them like they've done something wrong, but that's _bullshit_.

"He _walked out_ of your building," Lucretia says slowly. "He _literally_ walked out the front door. The Winter Soldier walked out, was _captured by the cameras_ , and none of you did anything to stop him? There weren’t _locks?_ You didn’t have someone _watching him?_ You didn’t think to secure the _Winter Soldier?_ "

"He has a name," Lup cuts in. "And what did you think I was going to do, Lucretia, _lock Taako up?_ That's — I wasn't going to do that to him. Haven't you seen the _files?_ Haven't you read what they _did to him?_ "

"Lup," Lucretia says. "Taako is the _Winter Soldier_."

"Do you think I don't know that?" Lup snaps. She's tired of everyone insinuating that she's blinded by sentiment — that because Taako is her brother, because she cares about him, all her caution went out the window. That she saw things in him that weren't there. "I know who he was, but he's not a _criminal_. He was — he was a fucking _prisoner of war_ , and if you wanted to treat him like a criminal then _you should have taken him_."

It's an empty statement. As if Lup would have let the remnants of SHIELD have Taako.

"We don't have the resources," Lucretia says, and there's a crack in her cool facade now, a furrow to her brow that gives away stress, concern. "Don't think that wouldn't have been the first thing that we did if we were capable of it, Lup, but you _destroyed SHIELD_ , Captain, and I am _trying_ to keep the international intelligence community from _imploding_. The world didn’t stop spinning just because SHIELD was destroyed. If anything, SHIELD’s destruction has created new opportunities for its enemies to exploit. There are _other problems_ I have to deal with right now. Of course I delegated to the people I _assumed_ were competent!"

"There's no point assigning blame now," Kravitz says. Lup startles. She forgot he was there. "Director, we've informed you of the situation to keep you in the loop, not to debate our actions. And Lup, please don't antagonize my boss."

Lucretia looks surprised to hear Kravitz talking back, even obliquely.

"Sorry," Lup says. To Kravitz, not Lucretia. She turns back to her. "Kravitz is right. We didn't call you to fight."

Lucretia runs a hand through her hair. "No. Though that's where you took it, Captain — but thank you for informing me of the situation. I'll pass the information on to the appropriate parties."

"Not yet," Lup says.

The Director raises her eyebrows. "Not yet?"

"He'll be in more danger if word gets out that he's active."

"Captain, in most cases, he _is_ the danger. You don't know what he's going to do, why he left — he's an unknown quantity. If he starts knocking heads it's not going to reflect well on any of us."

"It'll be harder to find him if the intelligence community knows he's active," Kravitz says, shaking his head. "He'll go to ground. Disappear. As you said, Director, he's the _Winter Soldier_. We have a better chance at finding him if he doesn't think anyone's looking for him."

Lucretia frowns, but gives in. "Fair point, agent. But you had best find him _soon._ "

"We will," Barry says. "I'm putting together a tracking algorithm."

Lucretia nods, looking from Barry to Lup to Kravitz. "Someone still needs to answer for the helicarrier crash. We were planning on using the Winter Soldier as a distraction for the Senate. The Soldier and knowledge of the Hunger would be enough to satisfy them. Without him, there’ll be more questions. Subpoenas.”

Lup doesn’t like hearing that Lucretia was planning on blaming Taako for the crash. It wasn’t his fault. He was _brainwashed_ by _Nazis._ He doesn’t deserve to be the focus of some government witch hunt.

She doesn’t want to take time away from finding Taako, but maybe by the time the hearing comes around they’ll have him back. She hopes they’ll have him back.

“I’ll go down to D.C.,” Kravitz says.

Lup whips her head around to look at him. “Krav? You sure?”

Kravitz smiles wryly. “Not like I have anything to hide anymore. I’d be more diplomatic than you would, and Hallwinter Industries doesn’t need the stock drop.”

“If you’re sure,” Lup says, hesitant. Kravitz makes sense — she hasn’t really been paying attention to anything but Taako lately and even she knows the media have been speculating about his past, his motivations — but she doesn’t like the idea of sending Kravitz when he didn’t do anything wrong except help her. She’s the one who suggested the info dump. She’s the one who wanted to burn everything down..

He nods. The Director clears her throat.

"Fix this," the Director says, and even on the television, the tired set of her shoulders becomes apparent. Lup hasn't seen Lucretia in person since D.C. "I can't hold off the World Security Council forever."

#

Priorities.

First, getting out of the city, ditching his hoodie, hanging it on the hook of a woman’s bathroom for misdirection. Keeping his hand firmly jammed in his pocket so nobody notices the glint of metal. Shaking out his braid to cover his face. Hunching over a little bit to avoid the cameras — he’s sure there are cameras; he can see the little dots of their lenses. Going to the big H&M near Times Square and ripping the tag off an anonymous hooded jacket, one not branded with Lup’s shield. Picking up a pair of glasses and swapping out his boots for a cheap pair of trainers. Bringing his boots with him and tossing them on the A train headed uptown. Getting on the PATH because it’s more anonymous than a bus. He could be a student. A young professional on a weekend away.

Second, deciding on a target.

He gets off at Hoboken. He steals a car. He heads north.

#

A week after Taako disappears, the headlines start coming in.

LOCAL NEWSPAPER HEADQUARTERS HIDES FOREIGN BASE IN ITS BASEMENT.

MASSIVE FIRE REVEALS TERRORIST HQ IN BOSTON.

CORRUPT SENATOR FOUND DEAD IN OWN BED, POLICE SUSPECT FOUL PLAY.

"Oh," Lup says, staring at the newspapers — she still likes paper — with a sort of reverent tenderness. "He's hunting the Hunger."

#

Barry and Lup go over the files from the info dump again, this time with a fine-toothed comb for any hint of where Taako might be going, places he might remember from his past missions for the Hunger. There are pages and pages of clearly annotated records of torture and experimentation, mission reports, and day-to-day maintenance logs. It's chilling how... mundane it is. If he didn't _know_ the files were about a person, there are whole sections where he wouldn't have guessed.

It’s hard to read through, but it’s all they have to go on. Barry just wishes it were more helpful.

"I'll be honest, I've got nothing," he says, looking at a list of Hunger locations on the east coast with attached addresses and phone numbers. He's been cross-referencing them with individual information and Taako's plan of attack. They have _locations_. Locations, and the aftermath of Taako’s attacks. They’re all carefully, meticulously executed — he’s hunting the Hunger with the precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel. If Taako’s choosing targets as deliberately and methodically as he’s killing them, the map should tell them exactly what they need to know, but he can’t work out a pattern to Taako’s movements. "There's no… logic to where he's hitting."

"I think he might be doing it by memory," Lup says. Her hair is a mess and she has bags under her eyes. It takes a lot to make Lup look tired. "He's keeps doubling back on himself."

Barry has a holographic map pulled up, cross-referencing known Hunger bases. Taako's trajectory — based on confirmed attacks and positive IDs off surveillance videos JARVIS has scrubbed from every available source — is marked with a thin white line, zig-zagging all over the place. It’s been a week. It's almost a tangle of white light. It doesn't make much sense. There's a reason that they’ve been stuck playing catch-up.

There’s a noticeable and pointed hole in all the lights.

"He's staying out of New York City, too," Barry notes. He doesn't mention why Taako would be doing that. It's obvious.

"Yeah," Lup says, all thinly veiled frustration. "I still don't get why he _left._ "

Barry doesn't have an answer for her. He has speculation, but nothing that would make Lup feel better. Maybe Kravitz was right about him using them to get his arm fixed. Maybe he was feeling suffocated. Maybe he remembered something about one of the bases he’s hit that drove him out of the tower.

"I don't know how much _reason_ he's using," Barry says instead. "If this is what his brain looks like, he shouldn't even be walking." Barry pulls up a screen filled with old MRI scans. "He should be, uh, probably catatonic. This is sorta an old file but that's... _boy_ , that's a lotta brain damage. It’s not surprising that he might be acting kind of weird."

"I just feel really stupid for not noticing," Lup says, running a hand through her hair. "He's my _brother_."

"Yeah, and he's got decades of programming and torture and brain damage to crunch through thanks to the Hunger," Barry points out. "He's not… It makes sense that he’s not the same person you remember."

"Still! He's... I dunno. I _know_ him, you know? And it was him in there, just… just a real fucked up version of him." Lup flips through a couple of screens halfheartedly. She’s staring through the records though, not reading them. Barry doesn't know how to fix this for her. He supposes there aren't any easy answers.

"He's got the serum, right?"

"Yeah," Lup confirms. "Think it's a different variant than mine, but, yeah. Some kind of serum."

"Okay,” Barry says. “That probably means... his brain is repairing itself, yeah? All the files talk about the programming wearing off given enough time. Optimal timing for peak performance during complex missions. Timelines for wiping and cryo."

"They do," Lup says, sounding disgusted. Barry doesn’t blame her. The files are disgusting and this is her _brother_. "It's just —"

"Excuse me, sir, madam, but I believe we've got a positive match in Connecticut, entering an office building" Jarvis cuts in. "96% chance that this is the Winter Soldier."

Barry and Lup exchange a glance, and Lup scrambles to her feet. "Time to suit up."

#

He finds the base through pieced together memory. He drives off the highway, onto side roads, through the small towns where nobody _lives_ , where the corporations make their offices to avoid the New York taxes, where the bankers and consultants and associates make their commute up from the city. These are the nowhere offices, concrete block buildings that make the perfect smokescreen for a shell corporation of a shell corporation of the Hunger.

The parking lot is busy, business still running as usual. The corporation is well hidden enough that it hasn’t been shut down by one the intelligence agencies still standing in the wake of SHIELD’s destruction. Most of its employees likely don’t realize they work for the Hunger.

He remembers the base even though he doesn't remember the exact address. He's been here many times — testing, maintenance, briefings. He doesn’t think this was a holding facility. He remembers the interior layout. He's still not used to remembering. It’s strange.

The building’s facade is impersonal. The labs are located in the basement — the Hunger is traditional that way.

He goes in through the back. There will be receptionists in the front. They might not be Hunger agents, but they’d call security and he’d have to shoot them, and they would die, and that's more deaths on his conscious. He doesn't bother keeping a body count — when he knows the number of people he’s killed is “too many,” what's the point? — but he doesn't like the idea of blood leaking out on blouses, glassy eyes, perfect hair splayed out on the floor. Something about it is viscerally unappealing — and it’s strange that it’s unappealing because the thought of it spirals into the image of a hundred bloodstained shirts, a hundred glassy eyes, and none of it means anything.

He needs to save his bullets, anyway. Going in the back is the strategic choice.

He brings a clipboard and wears a delivery uniform, carrying his weapons in a cardboard box that he lifts like it's light. It’s not, but that's what the metal arm is for.

Inside, no one even spares him a glance. They all assume he was cleared by reception to be here. He gets to the elevator without any problems and that's good, because he’s going to take out the base, but he doesn't take any joy in the thought of killing civilians — body disposal is annoying.

He doesn't like the memories he has of terrified, innocent faces.

He likes the Hunger bases that aren't attached to front businesses better. They’re less complicated. He's going to have to be quiet about this.

The service elevator claims to be _OUT OF ORDER_. He rolls his eyes and peels off the sign. They _always_ say they're out of order. It's practically the Hunger's calling card. It's so _easy_ to misdirect people. He presses the call button. He pretends to look at his stolen phone while he waits. He likes stealing phones. It's easy — people never keep an eye on their pockets, their purses. He plays a game the guy has downloaded. You take the little pastel blocks and try and connect them. It's relaxing.

The elevator doors open. He walks in and presses the combination that will take him down. He opens his cardboard box and strips out of the uniform, puts on his tac gear. He straps guns and knives and these neat little remote-detonated grenades he picked up at the last base he cleared to his body.

He puts on the facemask. It settles over his mouth and nose like its molded to him. He wonders if it was — if that’s just something he can’t remember yet. He doesn't like the way it feels, but he likes the way it makes Hunger operatives stare at him, like they're seeing a ghost, like he’s their worst nightmare brought to life.

He wants them to be scared. He was always scared — he can identify that now. Whenever he was awake, whenever he was in a base like this, what he felt was fear, or the absence of the ability to feel fear, and fear of the absence of feeling, and also, nothing.

It's still all tangled up in his brain. He doesn't know yet if he wants to untangle it.

But he knows this: He wants the Hunger to be scared and then he wants them to be dead.

He isn't sure whether that’s what he should want. He remembers motivation being important. For example: Lup is good because she has good intentions. But that’s not the only reason Lup is good. Lup is good because she is Lup. So what is he?

Maybe being good doesn't matter. Maybe it matters more to be _effective_. Maybe what matters is that the Hunger can't hurt Lup anymore — can't hurt him.

His head hurts. It hurts frequently now. His programming might be degrading. It should worry him, but it doesn't. Either the pain will stop or it won't.

The elevator reaches the basement and comes to a halt. He clears dumb hypotheticals from his mind. He presses against the wall by the door so he won't be seen.

The doors slide open. Silence. He remembers the layout of this place. First a lobby. Empty. The room is grey and bare, except for a heavy duty door with a keypad across from him. There’s no window in the door, nothing to indicate it’s anything but a server room, maybe. Another decoy to dissuade anyone who somehow got down to the basement by mistake.

He peeks around the corner. The lobby is empty. He crosses to the sealed door opposite the elevator and enters the code embedded in his mind into the keypad beside it.

The door unlocks. They should have changed the combination. He pulls it open and steps into the Hunger’s base.

There’s a woman on the other side, behind a tall desk with a potted orchid perched on its corner beside a vase of cut flowers. Reception, only the people working down here know what they signed up for. They know the pretense about the service elevator bring out of order is to throw people off their scent. They’re probably happy they weren’t caught up in the initial clear out of Hunger strongholds. They probably think they’re safe.

The administrative staff of any organization outnumbers the combat-trained, and combatants can’t react to a surprise attack if not given sufficient warning.

The woman’s eyes go wide and she opens her mouth to scream. He throws a knife and skewers her jugular. Blood sprays in a neat stream in front of her, on her computer monitor and the desk. It pools on the carpet.

The orchid is nice. He’s pretty sure they redecorated since the last time he was here. The woman gurgles, grasping at her neck, reaching out towards him with her other hand. She knocks over the vase as she slumps in her seat, eyes still fixed on him and his mask.

He winces at the crash it makes when it hits the floor, shattering.

"Janice?" calls a voice from the office closest to reception. "You alright there?"

He picks up his knife and takes care not to step in Janice’s blood. He wishes he was good at imitating voices, but with the mask over his mouth he couldn’t call back anyway. Instead, he goes to the office and puts another knife in another throat.

The first section of the base is all admin. The second is functional, where the Hunger performs its experiments. He knows the second part better than the first, but he was carted through the offices before. He can work it out.

There’s nothing new or different about this base. None of the hits have been difficult. It’s _boring_.

He blinks in surprise — _boredom._ He didn’t think he could be bored. Being bored is such a _person_ emotion.

Still, better bored than dead.

He walks down the hallway. The space is quiet. He keeps his handgun drawn. His breathing level, steady. He wants to run into someone. He wants someone to scream, to make things more _interesting_. The cream-colored office is silent. He’s thinking about the bodies behind him. He doesn't regret killing them, but he knows intellectually that he should be concerned that they’ll be discovered and someone will raise an alarm. He wishes he remembered the facility better, but his memory is like a sieve. He doesn't know what he knows.

He goes through unmarked doorways. He rounds the corner and spots —

The guard more like a shadow than a person, eyes meeting and the guard’s hand flying to the holter on their belt, the silver flash rising. He raises his metal arm to block the shot on animal-blind instinct, more recoil than decision.

The guard darts forward, they’re fast and he let his mind wander — he wasn’t focused on the mission and they’re crowding him, too close — before he can draw his own gun, they’re grabbing hold of his flesh arm, digging their thumbs into his elbow, where there’s a gap in his tac gear.

It’s an instant hurt, but he’s undeterred, reaching to grab their wrist, pulling them closer with his metal hand, cause if they want to play this _hand to hand_ then _fine let’s play_. He lashes out, perspective narrowing down to the crunch of steel and flesh and bone, to the guard’s face contorting in pain, the white teeth flashing against the red guns, the loud grunt of pain, they’ve got training but there’s no substitute for _practical experience,_ and there’s no _practical experience_ if you’re _dead._

Body like a sack of meat — he drops them, stepping back and unholstering one of his guns as an alarm starts ringing, and beyond that, he can hear shouts, mobilization, oh they’ve realized something is wrong, he’s the thing that’s wrong, he’s _here to fuck their shit up._ He feels _good._ He feels like something powerful, something to be scared of, still the bump in the night, the silent knife to the throat, the weapon. That’s something he still understands — the way a body is knit together, the way it can be unmade, it’s knowledge beaten into his brain with repetition, the definition of _practical experience — and he’s still not dead._

There are footsteps coming down the hall towards him. The shrill clang of the alarm echoes in his head. He realizes he’s smiling behind his mask.

Violence begets violence and they made him this — he will take them apart.

#

“Oh Jesus,” Barry says faintly. He looks paler than usual — which is pretty pale, Barry is _very_ white. Kravitz can't read his body language under the Iron Man suit but Barry's got his helmet off and his facial expressions on full view.

“Yeah,” Lup says, sounding just as unnerved. She looks on edge, even though there's nobody else around. Almost scared, which surprises Kravitz. If the Soldier has done the same here that he's done to all the other bases he hit, then it’s going to be completely cleaned out, only the hum of the fluorescent lights and the corpses to keep them company.

This Hunger base is set up like an office. An older office, but a nice one — there’s evidence of recent renovations that make it look almost like one of the office floors in Hallwinter Tower. There's a potted orchid on receptionist's desk that somehow escaped being destroyed. The same can't be said for a smashed vase of cut flowers. There are petals and stems and broken, glass mingling with blood. There's broken furniture, sweeping arcs of blood across the walls. There are men and women in professional clothing with their throats cut and people in guard uniforms with broken limbs dangling at odd angles. Lots of blindly staring eyeballs.

“Are we — oh,” Kravitz says. “Do you two need a minute?”

“Yeah, give us a sec,” Barry says, putting his helmet on. And again, “ _Jesus_.”

He closes the Iron Man faceplate and Kravitz can hear him take a deep breath of filtered air. Kravitz looks down at his phone and pretends to play a game. He forgets that Lup and Barry aren't like him sometimes.

"It kinda looks like the set of a horror flick," Lup says, after a couple minutes, her voice carefully nonchalant.

Kravitz puts his phone away. Time to get to work. He crouches down next to a broken table. A middle-aged man in a reddened suit lies prone across it. His face is unrecognizable from the blunt force trauma. There's copious amounts of blood splatter all around him.

Kravitz runs a finger along a table through the blood. It’s warm, sticky against his skin. "It hasn't coagulated yet. We must have barely missed Taako."

"Nothing phases you, huh bud?" Barry says, not unkindly.

"Part of the profession." Kravitz looks up at Barry, expression deadpan. They know about his past now. Everyone does. "You know, exposure therapy as a child assassin and all of that." He leans over to examine the body and the man’s face — or what used to be his face.

Lup kicks his leg gently. " _Morbid_ , Krav."

"I'm Russian," he says, and gently turns the corpse’s head, lifts an arm to examine it too. "These wounds were inflicted postmortem."

Barry bends closer to look over the body with him. "Lack of inflammation?" he says, and Kravitz is pleased that Barry sounds more like he sounds when he's in the lab, intellectual curiosity overriding any emotional distress. When he gets like this, Kravitz can understand how Barry worked in weapons development for so long.

"Yeah," Kravitz confirms, and gestures at the wounds on the corpse. "All the blood we're seeing comes from the chest — there's multiple punctures there. The head, though, the disfiguration — that all happened after the man was already dead."

"He didn't torture him?" Lup asks. She sounds hopeful, worried. It hadn’t occurred to Kravitz that that might be her concern. Kravitz wouldn’t blame the Soldier for torturing Hunger operatives.

He shakes his head. "No, he wasn’t tortured."

"Do you think the pattern holds for the other bodies?"

"Probably," Kravitz says, and amends that. "Actually, I'm not sure. This whole..." He struggles to find a word.

"Bloodbath," Lup suggests.

"— is new," Kravitz finishes. This base doesn't make any sense. It's sloppy. If the Soldier was trying to send a message, Kravitz has no idea what he was trying to say. Kravitz sort of wishes RQ was here. This feels more like SHIELD work than Avengers business.

"Well, let’s inspect the other bodies and the rest of the office before we come to any conclusions," Barry suggests. "See if there's a reason why he's breaking pattern."

"Sounds good," Lup says. She's frowning.

Kravitz cocks his head at her. "Do you have something?"

She shakes her head. "Just had a thought, babe. I'll tell you after we finish investigating."

Kravitz nods and turns back to the bodies. In his peripheral vision he can see blue light emanating from Barry's suit scanners as Barry has JARVIS make a digital reconstruction of the scene. He hears Lup's footsteps behind him as she walks away to investigate the rest of the base.

The bodies are bodies. Kravitz is intimately acquainted with corpses — the more unsavory aspects of his job have become less prevalent in his life since joining the Avengers, will probably become even less so now that SHIELD no longer exists, but still he spent decades working in wetworks. He examines the broken corpses with a practiced, clinical eye.

The evidence is... confusing. There's no common thread to the way the Hunger operatives were killed — the bodies in the other bases were _tidy_ in a way that they aren't here. The Soldier's calling card has always been efficiency, except when he was being used to make a statement, in which case there should have been more overt evidence of violence. And there's blood and smashed furniture everywhere, but half the bodies were hit postmortem — obvious to any forensics expert. It wasn't deliberate torture. It wasn't deliberate violence.

Kravitz isn't sure what to make of it. If anything, the room reads like the Soldier hadn't been thinking _at all_.

"Alright, I want to know how this looks to you," Barry says, walking up behind him. He holds out a hand, palm up, and a projection of the base, encased in a holographic blue grid appears in the air above it. "Tell me if this reconstruction is reasonable."

He points and the scene plays out in translucence. First, the Soldier enters the room. This part seems to match the previous fights — clinical and precise — but then halfway through the third assault, everything changes. The Soldier stops fighting clean. It becomes... messy. And it continues to be messy as the Soldier snaps necks and hits heads and _keeps_ hitting heads, even after the people they belong to are clearly already dead. It’s unnecessary. Out of character. In the projection, the Soldier staggers to his feet and walks around the corner, leaving a bloody handprint where he touched the wall for balance. The holograms are just person-shaped figures without any defining characteristics or facial expressions, but Kravitz bets the Soldier looked tired.

The scene fades.

"It's... reasonable, but it can't be _right_ ," Kravitz says.

"Why not?" Barry asks.

Kravitz frowns instead of saying anything. It _feels_ wrong.

Lup turns the corner with the bloody handprint, holding up a flash drive. "Servers are all busted," she says. "He left us this as a present though." She tosses the flash drive at Kravitz, who plucks it from the air and puts it in one of his belt pockets. "You two figure anything out?"

Kravitz shakes his head, but Barry shrugs. "Kravitz thinks the reconstruction is wrong, but JARVIS gave me a 99% accuracy estimate on it and I think — here, take a look."

Barry replays the hologram. Kravitz doesn't bother rewatching, walking to the reception desk to check the papers there and to give Lup and Barry some privacy. If the Soldier left then a drive, he might have left paper evidence for them to find too, and the front desk is the logical place for it.

A cursory glance through the files on the dead woman’s desk seems to indicate otherwise — better save the evidence for later perusal, though. They're Hunger documents either way. Kravitz examines the rest of the desk. Blood, scattered pens and smashed screen, corpse. The untouched orchid — except there's a single green break on the stem. It looks like a clean cut.

A single orchid blossom, missing.

Kravitz remembers the Soldier stealing flowers once. A few roses from a government official's office. A handler told him to throw them away before the scent lingered.

The blue light from Barry’s projection cuts off. Kravitz glances over at him and Lup. She looks — well, Kravitz doesn't know how to name the emotion on her face. Despair mingled with hope, desperation and elation all at once.

"Krav’s wrong,” she says. “That's _Taako_. He's _pissed_."

#

The Soldier sits in the back of a moving van. He snuck in just before the truck pulled away from the curb. He's headed south again, and he's settling in for a long wait. He's very tired. He doesn't dare sleep. He might miss the young couple whose boxes he’s sitting on pulling over for a break. They might open the doors to the back of the van. They might see him. He doesn’t want to have to kill them.

There's still blood underneath his nails. He'll have to scrub it off at the next rest stop.

He strokes the stolen orchid petal between his flesh fingertips. It feels like velvet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are _very_ appreciated. We read and love them all!  <3 Also, we promised all hurts would be comforted and we meant it. 
> 
> You might have noticed that there is a podfic of this fic now! GoLBPodfics very kindly recorded it and has the first four chapters up already. We highly recommend it because they do an amazing job and we are _thrilled_ it exists! [Please check it out here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17492366/chapters/41200706) and give them some love. 
> 
> You can find us on tumblr, where we're [@anonymousAlchemist](anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [@marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)! We'd love to hear from you!


	15. All Your Sins Forgiven

Kravitz gets the text early in the morning: _Come down a couple days before the hearing. RQ is back!_

Kravitz frowns at it. Istus is a more reliable indicator of her wife's schedule than even RQ herself is. If she says that RQ's op is over, it's over, even if she hasn't let Kravitz know that she's back — and RQ _always_ lets him know when she's done with solo missions. He does the same for her — she made it clear early in their partnership that she wants to know if he's alright, if he's in SHIELD Medical, if she has to knock some heads together.

Kravitz stares at his phone. He doesn't have plans for the weekend, unless quietly worrying about the Senate hearings counts as _plans._

He knows vaguely what they’re going to ask him — questions about his decision to upload SHIELD’s files, the personal attacks they’re likely to make. They’ll probably call him a sleeper agent, a traitor, maybe make some subtly derogatory comments about his background or race. He doesn’t think he’s in danger of being arrested, but he doesn’t like the idea of being on national television. Again.

 _I'm busy with Avengers stuff_ , he texts back. A few seconds later, his phone starts buzzing. He hesitates, but answers.

"You're busy brooding about the Senate hearing," Istus says without any preamble. "You’re going to be _fine_. Just intimidate them into submission! Also," she continues teasingly, "You can’t only visit when you’re overthrowing the government."

"I've been _busy_ ," Kravitz says.

"Too busy for your friends?" Istus says.

Kravitz sighs. Istus is the kindest steamroller: it's impossible to win an argument against her. "I'm not going to be good company."

"You’re always good company," Istus says cheerfully. "Your eye candy!"

" _Istus_ ," Kravitz says, and she laughs at him. “I’ll see you after the hearing, I promise. I’ll stay for a couple days.”

“You certainly will,” says Istus. “I’ll get Raven to pick up cupcakes. We miss you, Krav.”

“I’ll see you soon,” he says. “You’ll be sick of me in days, you’ll see.”

Kravitz is smiling when he hangs up.

#

The drive down to D.C. in uneventful. As per usual, the traffic out of NYC is abysmal, but once Kravitz gets on the freeway, the Maserati he stole from Barry's personal collection eats mileage like nothing else. Kravitz may be going over the speed limit, but Barry's car is equipped with sensors for cameras and police. It makes a nice change from knowing he’s likely to be pulled over even when he’s driving a purposefully unremarkable Ford Focus five miles below the speed limit. It helps to be friends with rich white guys.

It's relaxing, actually. It's the middle of the day and the commuter traffic hasn't ramped up yet. Kravitz can stare at the freeway and watch the landscape zoom past. He enjoys mindless tasks. He has decades of experience driving.

Kravitz learned a long time ago, back in the Red Room. That information is probably online too. He should go through the data dump for files about him, should look at the Wikipedia page that must have been updated, but he finds himself reluctant. He's been trained to collect all relevant information — and what the world now knows about him is relevant information — but he doesn't _want_ to know.

It feels like if he doesn't know, then it still isn't real, which is frankly illogical but, well, Barry and JARVIS are monitoring the situation. Lucretia is probably monitoring the situation. He blew his deep cover capabilities with the Battle of New York back in 2012, so maybe it’s alright to leaving the files alone. Lucretia might not warn him, but Barry definitely would.

Kravitz isn't used to trusting so many people. The past few years have been something of a departure from the norm. The last time he trusted anyone the way he trusts Barry and Lup was when RQ flipped him, and the time before that was —

Nice cars always make him remember the Soldier. The way Kravitz remembers the Soldier, before he knew about Taako, before he knew Captain America as anything more than a propaganda tool of the American capitalist machinery. Not the Soldier who shot him — the Soldier who taught him how to shoot.

Kravitz frowns and turns up the radio. He doesn't really want to think about this. They knew each other for such a short time. He needs to stop letting the past color his interactions with Lup’s brother. He’s pretty sure none of this information is online — it’s not included in the Winter Soldier files they’ve scraped from the data drop and he certainly never told anyone about it. The Winter Soldier was a ghost operative, more legend than fact, and he hadn't seen the point at divulging this particular piece of his past. It hadn't seemed relevant.

But now it _is_. Not that he's told Lup. The time for that seems to have passed, and if he were to bring it up all "Hey, I knew your brother, decades ago when he was brainwashed, but before he was _really_ brainwashed," Kravitz suspects it wouldn’t go over well. And it's not like any his information is relevant now — reflecting back on Taako’s short time in Hallwinter Tower, it seems like he genuinely doesn’t remember shooting Kravitz, let alone his time in the Red Room.

It's easier to think of Taako objectively he's not around. When he's an abstract mission, analogous to a rogue agent that needs to be reigned in. When he’s not someone to be trusted.

Compartmentalization is a useful skill for a spy. A useful skill for a "superhero." Kravitz is going to set aside his memories of the Soldier in favor of objective information obtained through direct observation and intelligence reports. Taako seems neither like the brother Lup remembers, nor the man Kravitz worked with.

But he's hunting the Hunger. That's the piece that doesn't track. An operative of the Soldier's skill would have no problem selling his skills as a sniper and assassin to the highest bidder, or failing that, he would have even less trouble going to ground. Disappearing. Yet, Taako has been popping up on their radar with unnerving consistency. He's been leaving them intel. Lup keeps searching for messages in the data he leaves behind, and Kravitz doesn't have the heart to tell her that the Soldier wouldn't do that.

But then, Kravitz no longer knows the Soldier. He’s never known Taako.

Kravitz knows he's missing something.

#

Lup comes running into Barry’s workshop, which is no surprise. The Senate hearings are starting soon, and although Kravitz rejected their offers of coming down to DC with him — “RQ and Istus are both there, already” — there’s no way he and Lup aren’t watching. Barry has the stream already playing in the background while he goes over JARVIS’s predictions for Taako’s next targets, even though the hearing hasn’t started yet. He just likes to be prepared.

Barry looks up from his work and smiles at Lup — but his face falls as he catches sight of her dismayed expression. She's got a file crumpled in her hand and she looks worried as she stops and steadies herself by his desk.

"What's wrong? Are we suiting up?" Barry asks, standing. "Is Taako okay? Kravitz?"

"Nah it’s — it’s nothing like that, babe," she says. She's not out of breath despite the fact that she hasn't been _really_ keeping up with training. Or sleeping, much. The super soldier serum really was one of his father’s greatest achievements. "Just, I was looking through the Winter Soldier files again —"

" _Lup_ ," Barry says. The files haven’t helped find Taako so far. They're horrific. Clinical in the way lab reports tends to be clinical. He’s read them more thoroughly than Lup or Kravitz. He started going through them after Kravitz dumped all the SHIELD and Hunger data on the web, while Lup was in the hospital recovering. Every time he goes through them, Barry finds himself fingering the cool edge of arc reactor buried in his chest, thinking about what it would have been like, had it not been months but years of capture in a cave in the middle of nowhere.

"Babe. You know I have to," she says. The firm set of her jaw, contrasted to the tired curve of her eyes. “If there’s any hint about what Taako’s thinking —”

"They're, uh, they're kind of a lot, Lup," he says, and hastily follows it up with, "and it's not like I don't think you can handle graphic content or whatever, this isn't, uh — I'm not trying to be _misogynistic_. I mean, you're a war hero, for chrissakes, we both saw the last lab and everything, it's just... I didn't want you to have to look at it alone, you know?"

The way Lup talked about Taako, before she learned he was alive, the love she has for her brother, stands in sharp contrast to the dissection of the man in the reports. There’s nothing kind in them.

"Aw babe," Lup says. She's smiling now, walking around his desk to hug him from behind. "You're sweet, but it's cute that you thought you could stop me."

"You've got a lot on your plate," he says. "Promise I wasn't trying to stop you or anything, but JARVIS and I have it covered."

"Mm," Lup says. Barry takes a moment to enjoy the warm weight of her across his shoulders, putting down his tablet. She runs hot. Probably because of the serum. They haven't had much time to be alone lately.

"They made Taako kill Sildar," she says, out of nowhere. "Did you know?"

Barry looks up at her in surprise. She looks worried again, or... maybe not worried, but concerned.

"Yeah, I knew."

"They made him kill your dad."

"Yeah," Barry says. It seems more real when Lup says it than it did when he read the files. He’s been trying not to think about it. "The Hunger did."

"You knew about this? When Taako showed up?"

"Yeah."

"Are you alright? I mean, with this whole thing, Taako being in the tower and everything, but also I guess — I guess just in general?"

Barry shrugs, which is hard to do with Lup leaning her weight on him. "I mean, I'm not going to pretend that it isn't... fucked up. It's, uh, _really_ fucked up. But I’ve read all the files, you know? It wasn't really… him."

Lup is quiet for a moment. She moves to sit on the edge of his desk. "I wouldn't blame you, if you weren't alright with it."

Barry takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. He reaches out blindly to pat Lup's thigh or something, and she catches his hand in her own. He doesn't think about his parents much. They left him the whole weight of Hallwinter Industries. They weren't… _great_ as parents. They argued a lot. He had a rough adolescence. It’s been twenty-odd years. He still kind of misses them.

Lup’s brother killed Sildar and Marlene Hallwinter. They died alone on the side of the road, blood and rainwater pooling around them.

Barry’s dad used to talk about the twins, when it was close to the anniversary of Lup’s and Taako’s deaths, when it was time for his annual search in the arctic. He admired Taako — he told Barry about his skill as a sniper and a strategist, his ingenuity, called him “that smart sonofabitch,” when he was feeling maudlin. Barry read the Hunger files about his parents’ death and wondered how hurt, how confused his father was when he saw the Winter Soldier standing over him, saw that it was Taako Taaco holding the gun. Thought about the brief moment of realization before his father’s death.

Barry read that file, and then he read the other files, and he thought about Taako, brainwashed by Nazis, with about as much agency as a bullet fired from a gun. He thought about the cave in Afghanistan where he spent weeks being held hostage. He thought about the blank confusion on Taako’s face when no one else was around, the way he stared into empty space, dissociating while Barry worked on his arm. JARVIS has hours of footage of Taako just… sitting. Like he didn’t know what else to do.

"I guess... it's maybe not the best way to feel, but finding out, in a weird sort of way it's sort of a relief," Barry confesses. "Dad was — dad never seemed like someone who could be killed in a _car accident_. He was a good driver, you know? He had pretty much stopped drinking, and things were... they were getting better. Like, the fact that the Hunger put a hit out for him almost makes more sense."

He opens his eyes again. Looks up at Lup. "Taako's your brother. And even if he wasn't, I mean — _wow_ , they've done some terrible shit to him. I can't — it wasn't him, yeah?"

"It wasn't him," Lup repeats, almost like she’s saying it to herself more than him.

"I'm glad you have him back," Barry says, because he feels like she could use some reassurance. She tries really hard to project _strength_ , to present _conviction_. That doesn't mean she doesn't deserve some positive reinforcement. "I'm happy that I can help you."

He squeezes her hand. Her face… crumples a little, like she's maybe going to cry, but she doesn't. Lup pulls him over so that he can rest his head on her thigh, run her hand through his hair.

"I'm sorry about your parents," Lup says, and Barry lets the decades-old wound hurt for a moment. He wishes he’d been able to make up with his father before his death. He shouldn't have stormed upstairs after their last fight without saying goodnight to his mother.

"Thanks," he says. “Me t —”

“Sir, ma’am,” JARVIS says. “I apologize for the interruption but the Senate hearing is starting.”

Barry and Lup both turn to look at the screen. Kravitz is walking into the courtroom. The senators’ attention is utterly focused on him, like sharks scenting blood in the water, already heavy with judgement. Sympathy can wait.

#

Kravitz is halfway through climbing through the kitchen window before he notices Istus sitting at the table. He freezes. He's still in his suit, though he's taken his tie off and and stuck it in his pocket. He's a little sweaty from walking. She smiles at him.

"Er," he says. "Sorry I didn't call."

"That's alright," Istus says. Her knitting needles click rhythmically. "But I thought we trained you out of this."

She means the whole entering through the fire escape thing, climbing through the window without using the front door. It was a habit of Kravitz's for a few months after RQ had, effectively, adopted him into their family. Connections were discouraged in the Red Room. So was _liking_ things. Using the front door felt too public.t felt like if he went through it, if he visited RQ and Istus too much, their cozy apartment and their friendship would somehow be taken away from him.

He told RQ as much when she confronted him about it, matter of fact and a little embarrassed. She shook her head and said "God, you need _so_ much therapy," and then, "SHIELD wants you to have connections, Krav," and "listen, if anyone gives you shit about visiting, I'll kick their ass for you."

Kravitz told her that he was perfectly capable of kicking asses on his own, and she’d tugged one of his then-short locs and said not to talk back.

Kravitz had started using the front door.

Right now, he finishes climbing awkwardly through the window, closing it gently behind him. He takes off his shoes and leaves them on the windowsill.

Istus keeps watching him, clearly amused.

"I didn't want any news crews following me," Kravitz says, taking off his jacket and hanging it over the back of the chair before sitting heavily in it. He doesn't mind if Istus sees him tired.

"That's thoughtful of you," Istus says. "How'd it go?"

"Weren't you watching?"

"Of course we were — since you didn't let us come," Istus says. "I'm asking how you _feel_ , Krav."

"Where's RQ?" Kravitz asks.

Istus gives him a _look_ at the very abrupt and not very subtle change of subject. "She's picking up Chinese food from that place you like," she says.

Kravitz perks up. "The place with the good dandan noodles?"

"Mhmm," Istus nods. "But you didn't answer my question."

Kravitz winces. RQ might have let the matter go, but Istus wouldn't. He shrugs. "It was... about what I expected."

Just a few hours ago, he stood in the courtroom — although they looked down at him and said “it's not a _trial_ ” — and was accused of being anything from an enemy of a state to a Russian mole.

“How is this country expected to maintain its national security, given that you’ve laid waste to its intelligence apparatus?” For something that wasn’t supposed to be a trial, it felt an awful lot like one, especially with the paparazzi lurking outside, with the wreckage of the helicarriers still being dragged out of the Potomac nearby.

“The Hunger was feeding you lies, not intelligence,” Kravitz said. “We did what we had to do to _protect_ people — in America and beyond — from the Hunger.”

"Knowing your history, how can we trust you?" another senator asked, staring at Kravitz from the raised platform where all the men and women with questions sat. Kravitz knows the sort of politicians that these men and women are. They think their hands are clean because they’ve never physically put their hands on another, because they think that a weapon has any say in who fires it.

"You trust Captain America," Kravitz said, instead of any of the other things he wanted to say. Instead of pointing out that Congress was fighting to keep their heads above water, that everyone in Washington was trying to prove they had nothing to do with SHIELD, with Project Insight. That Lucas Miller had had friends all over the Hill before his role in trying to hand the world’s freedom to the Hunger was exposed. Kravitz didn’t tell them he knew they were just looking for a scapegoat and that he — Black, Jewish, a former enemy operative, the one who exposed the Hunger in a massive data dump — made an awfully convenient target. He wasn't raised to talk back.

He did turn and walk out, though, and nobody stopped him. His reputation preceded him.

Outside, he had to get past all the photographers and journalists and camera crews and they were all flashing cameras at him and shouting at him to _look over here!_ or asking him questions like _do you have anything to say about your past actions for the USSR?_ or _Mr. Kravitz do you have the super soldier serum?_

Kravitz had made his way through the crowd as quickly as he could, muscling his way past them and out into the street. He walked; he didn't run. A man running looks suspicious. He walked and walked and he was sure he was being followed, because of course they would follow him — it’s what Kravitz would have done, in their place. So he took a meandering path across D.C., with lots of bus swaps and metro rides until finally it was late afternoon and he was climbing up RQ and Istus's fire escape, the back of his white shirt drenched with sweat under his suit jacket.

"What were you expecting?"

"Publicity," Kravitz says, and then, "Do we have to talk about this?"

"Not right now." Istus isn’t entirely unsympathetic. "For what it's worth, you did a great job. You held your own like a champ."

"Oh," Kravitz says, pleased. "Thank you." He's still not sure whether he did the right thing. Maybe he was too harsh.

"Don't let them use you as a scapegoat," Istus advises, like she’s reading his mind. "And go take a shower. Just looking at you makes me feel sweaty."

Kravitz rolls his eyes like the American teenager he never was. "Al- _right_ , I can take a hint." He stands and let’s Istus wave him off to the shower.

The apartment only has one bathroom with a shower, and it's routine for Kravitz to grab a towel out of the closet and lock the door before stripping off his clothes inside. He used to stay over more often, before the Avengers Initiative became a _thing_. There's a tube of his favorite citrus-scented body wash still on the bathtub rim, and a bottle of the shampoo brand he and RQ both use. It's _familiar_ in a way his apartment in Hallwinter Tower still isn't.

Not that he needs familiarity — he's a spy. He's fine anywhere.

But it's nice to pile his dress clothes on the covered toilet seat, to turn on the water and wait a minute for it to heat up, to step under the stream and try not to think about the hearings. Kravitz suspects they were harder on him because he was alone, because they assumed the Avengers and the remains of SHIELD were throwing him under the bus. Kravitz would be offended at that if it wasn't a useful assumption. He chose to go in alone — he's the best at this sort of political posturing. And it wouldn't have been fair to let the Soldier take the blame through his absence, though he would have been an easy figure to hang the blame on.

Kravitz doesn't trust the Soldier. But he _is_ Lup's brother, and Kravitz remembers what it was like to have no say in your missions and targets. It’s unfair to make the weapon responsible for the wielder. Kravitz has been an operative for a long time and him and the Soldier are in the same business — assassinations, wetworks, missions carried out in the dark of night. Not that the Soldier would offer _him_ the same protection, if their roles were reversed. Kravitz knows that Lup thinks he's being unreasonable, but he's the only one treating the Soldier like the man deserves to be treated, with his skill, his talents, his _history_.

Kravitz pours some shampoo into his hand and lathers it up before rubs it into the roots of his hair. But the Soldier's been acting erratically. It was one thing when the Soldier was quietly following Lup around, pretending to be Taako. But now, the Soldier is moving from target to target, taking bases out with no institutional support, no discernable pattern, and Lup says that it looks like he's angry, or scared, and so far every base he's taken out has been —

_Oh._

#

Kravitz comes running out of the bathroom shirtless, which is a handsome, wet surprise. He's got a towel around his waist and his hair is dripping everywhere. He looks like he's been hit with a brick, which means that he's _really_ stunned. Despite all the lessons on person-ing that RQ and Istus have given Kravitz over the years — watching K-dramas, going to the supermarket, playing with cats in a cat cafe — he's never _really_ been fond of using facial expressions in his daily life. Istus theorizes it’s a coping mechanism — the Red Room sounds like a place where showing any sort of emotion would be punished. RQ likes the moments when she can catch him off guard, when he shows a small bit of unfiltered expression.

She grins at him. "Don't slip!" she says, instead of hello.

Kravitz stops running and slows down, which is good, because that towel was starting to look like it was going to fall down. "I'm not going to _slip_.”

RQ rolls her eyes. "Sure, kiddo."

He's older than her, but RQ has always considered Kravitz to be something like her younger brother, at least in lived, real person experience. Kravitz sighs and wrinkles his eyebrows in a way that makes him look stern, but annoyed, and she can’t help laughing at him, standing there in his towel, pouting at her like she’s his frustrating older sibling who just won’t take him seriously.

She’s missed him.

When she came home with their take out, Istus said that Kravitz seemed tired, sort of down, that he didn't want to talk about the hearings. Understandable, considering what they saw on television.

Kravitz held his own magnificently. Watching, RQ had felt proud. That was her partner eviscerating the American government on live TV. But there was a bitter edge to it. Kravitz had always eschewed the spotlight. He spent his first few months at SHIELD trying to take up as little space as possible, despite showboating on missions with her, like he wasn't sure how to act when he was being seen. As an operative, being efficient, being effective, all of that hinged upon his anonymity. He must have been so uncomfortable. She's a little surprised he volunteered.

RQ privately worried that she's the cause of all this. After all, she's the one who encouraged him to join the Avengers Initiative when the Director tapped both of them. The one who suggested partnering him with Captain America when RQ was given the Wakandan op — which at least ended in a coronation, even if SHIELD is defunct now.

She’s always thought Kravitz deserved a life, and a life means having friends, knowing people who aren't just her and Istus. Being friends with Lup and Barry was good for him.

But now his entire history is laid out all over the internet and RQ knows how much Kravitz must hate it.

Istus says RQ's overprotective sometimes, but that's what happens when you decide to flip the Russian superspy you tango with on an op before realizing he's never had any sort of childhood or normal life and then adopt the now _very_ confused assassin who occasionally sleeps in your spare room after he tells you about his sad, sad personal history.

Istus glances up at RQ like she can tell RQ is thinking about her. She puts down the box of takeout that she's opening and looks over at Kravitz, who is still standing half-naked and dripping all over the kitchen floor.

"No shirt, no service," Istus says. "Go put something comfy on."

"Wait, no, this is important," Kravitz says, which is surprising because he usually listens to Istus, even when she tells him not to. "I figured out what Taako's doing. I have to call Lup."

"You can tell her _after_ you put a shirt on," RQ says, because backing your wife up is an important part of a happy marriage. "And after you eat something."

" _Fine_ ," Kravitz says, put out, but too distracted to protest much, and walks to his room.

RQ and Istus share a glance.

"Well, he's out of it," Istus says.

"I bet he's not even going to dry his _hair_ ," RQ says. "I'm going to get another towel."

She stands, leaving the carton of pork fried rice behind, and walks over to the linen closet to grab a towel. She's very invested in Kravitz's locs, considering that she's the one who made that whole situation happen. Also, fixing his hair is a nice way to get him to sit down for a bit and maybe talk about things, if there are things to talk about. Which right now, seems like there are.

When she walks back into the kitchen, Kravitz is sitting next to Istus, eating noodles while Istus opens the rest of the containers. He testified in front of Congress — the least they can do is order him a bunch of take-out. He's wearing loungewear, but his hair, as RQ expected, is wet, and she drops the towel she’s carrying over his shoulders before sitting across from them.

"Dry your hair," RQ says. "Or at least tie it up."

" _RQ_ ," Kravitz says through a mouthful of noodles.

"Do you want to trap moisture in them?" she says, and he puts the carton down and wraps his hair in the towel, which is better than nothing, she guesses. He must be really worked up.

"What'd you figure out?" she asks.

"The So — Taako," he says. "He's doing the same thing I did, that time you were really mad at me. Not the time in Budapest, the other time. With the Red Room."

"You mean your murder tour?" RQ _definitely_ remembers Kravitz's murder tour. Six months of not being sure whether he was dead or alive or defected until Kravitz showed up in their kitchen one night, splattered in dried blood and grimly satisfied and she made him sit down and _explain_ things to her. Where he’d been and what he’d done. Mostly what he told her was that everyone who could control him was dead and he was the one who killed them.

She hadn't been sure what to say to that. Istus had made Kravitz tea and told him that the whole point of being partners was that him and RQ were a _team_ , and that he should have _told RQ what he was doing_ and that SHIELD would have _helped_ , and that she was _terribly disappointed_ in him.

Kravitz wilted a little at that and told them that he didn't think they deserved to get mixed into this, that he had just been... angry. Scared the Red Room would come back for him. He’d said he was sorry.

Istus made him another cup of tea. RQ told him not to do it again, and that they were glad he was okay, and he had stared at her like it was the first time someone had told him that, which was just really sad overall, but “really sad overall” is kind of the story of Kravitz’s life up until RQ flipped him.

"Yes, do we have to call it that?" Kravitz says, and eats another mouthful of noodles.

"You have to admit it’s descriptive," says Istus.

"It makes me sound like I'm a serial killer," Kravitz says. "I'm _wetworks_."

"Which is close enough," RQ says, rehashing the treads of a familiar joke. What’s the difference between a professional assassin and a serial killer? A paycheck. "But explain?"

Kravitz swallows his noodles. "I mean," he starts, "when I left Russia — when you flipped me — at first, I didn't... I was trying to figure out... SHIELD, and you, and being able to... make my own decisions, but after that..."

He pauses. Frowns. "I remember thinking that I _had_ to get the Red Room. I was... mad. And confused that I was mad, but not just at them, at _SHIELD_ too — at _everything_. And I didn't want help. And I didn't think I was going to come back. I think Taako is feeling something similar."

"Your circumstances aren't the same, though," RQ says, gently. She knows something about the history that Kravitz and the Soldier share. Kravitz is prone to melodrama regarding the man. She privately thinks that Kravitz should tell Lup, but it's his secret to share, not hers.

Kravitz stares at his noodles. "I remember the Soldier, and if there's anything left of him in Taako, after everything the Hunger did to him, I would bet money that he's angrier than I ever was." He shakes his head, and looks up at RQ and Istus. "But I've gotten off topic. What I meant was — I think he's going to come back once he's done."

#

He watches the video on a stolen phone — this one lifted from the pocket of a well-dressed banker. The quality is bad — everything pixelated, the voices tinny. The connection is terrible where he is. It’s days after the hearing. He hadn’t even known they were happening until he picked up a discarded newspaper from a bus seat and read a headline. Some lady writing an op-ed about guilt. As if she was in a position to judge. As if she could understand guilt. Not that he understands much about it either.

The woman also wrote about punishment. He understands punishment.

He touches the screen with his finger to pause it, waiting for the rest of the video to load. There’s still a little dried blood in the fine lines of his fingerprints.

On the screen, a pixelated Kravitz smiles all cold — a smile like someone never taught him how to smile. A smile like cardboard. All stiff.

He taps the screen again to make it play. The smile reminds him of the second time Kravitz interrogated him, just before he left. It’s the same sort of mask. This one cruel, that one kind. Someone taught Kravitz how to smile sweet better than they taught him to smile sour. Or maybe right now he’s just playing up the Reaper thing. Kravitz’s holding his own, though. He has a nice voice.

He wonders why Lup isn’t there. He would have liked to see Lup. He’s glad she’s not in trouble.

If anyone should be in trouble, it’s probably him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! Make our day by leaving a comment and kudos. They fuel us through editing and updating our fic! <3
> 
> Also, yesterday was anonymousAlchemist's birthday so you should _definitely_ leave her a comment telling her she did a good job on this chapter.
> 
> If you have tumblr account, come say hi! We're always up for a chat. On tumblr we're [@anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [@marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)!


	16. Some Experiences Are Not Universal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: The first section of this chapter contains a description of a panic attack from the narrator's point of view.

The nice thing, he thinks, as he stares through the rifle scope, the nice thing about hunting the Hunger is that it’s easy. It’s not _simple_ — each base is a different location with different people, shit inside, and there’s lots of different intel ‘cause the Hunger spreads out its brains like breadcrumbs. But it’s easy. It’s just killing people, and he’s good at killing people. He’s good at raiding drop locations for tac gear and guns, climbing through windows and ventilation shafts, dropping hot lead into foreheads — pop, pop, pop. He’s got a mission (take down the Hunger), a timeline (as long as it takes), authorities to evade (The Avengers), and it’s restful to not have to think about anything but the next target. There’s nothing but a cool blankness in his mind now, a clarity of purpose that overshadows any memories or complications.

Like right now, lying across a branch with his scope and rifle all set up, listening for his target’s car to come tearing around the bend. First he'll shoot out the front tire. Then he'll walk over and kill the driver up close and personal.

He knows this plan is a mistake, that it would be easier to just shoot the target through the forehead, from a distance. But he’s... angry. The man driving the car is one of the technicians — Tyler Richardson, thirty-two, no dependents — who used to perform maintenance on him. He remembers — bank vault, searing pain. Remembers cold fingers placing the bite guard into his mouth. It doesn’t matter. Tyler's just one of the many technicians who made him hurt, all of them with their latex gloves, the disgust on their faces. He doesn't know why he wants this to be personal, except he wants them to know who's hunting them now, and he doesn't know when he started wanting that. All he knows that it feels _good_ — the fear in their eyes, their last gasps of breath. Anyway, he wants the Hunger gone. That’s an easy desire. Lup would want the Hunger gone too.

If he’s thinking about the Hunger, he doesn’t have to think about himself.

Tyler drives down this road between 6:00PM and 6:30PM every Friday because his girlfriend lives forty minutes outside of D.C. She works for a nonprofit. She thinks that Tyler works for the federal government. He always spends the weekend at her apartment, like clockwork. Tyler's a good boyfriend, probably. Consistent. Even after Tyler’s job torturing him fell apart.

The road is quiet. It's drizzling a little bit. He's getting damp. It's uncomfortable, his clothing starting to cling to his body. But he feels very awake. He hasn't been sleeping. When he tries, he wakes up before completing a REM cycle, fragments of memory, snatches of emotion churning in his stomach, making him hurl. He gave up on trying after the first few times had him puking bile.

A better use of his nighttime is this: cleaning up after the Hunger. Lup can't get mad at him for that.

He gets the feeling Lup might be mad about some other things, though. He's _justified_ , though. He doesn’t have a secure location to sleep in. He left his duffle at the tower. He steals protein bars and candy from bodegas, supermarkets. He doesn’t think about hunger. He doesn’t feel _hungry_. He feels like a live wire coated in insulation. Something jittery beneath the calm. He doesn’t think about it. He has a mission. The serum will keep him going. It always does.

He doesn’t think he can die.

The roar of an engine. A car zooming into his field of vision. It's not the right make or model — he lets it go. He yawns, more a twitch of the face than anything else. This op is more boring than clearing out bases. It's a lot of watching and waiting. At least when he's raiding Hunger labs it’s _interesting_. It’s gross work, but easy: ill anything that moves before they can say anything, copy the computers onto a USB, and leave the USB for the Avengers to find.

Each lab is emptier, less personnel, less information. He thinks Hunger might be catching wind of his plan. This could be a problem. He doesn’t know how to solve it, except to push himself farther, faster. Start cleaning up the loose ends. He’s been avoiding… certain bases. That’s why he’s out here, if he’s being honest with himself.

He hears the roar of an engine. He snaps back to attention and peers through the scope.

The span of seconds: silver-grey car, Maryland license plate, exhale and pull the trigger, absorb the recoil against the metal arm, sudden crack of sound, drop out of the tree and pull out the smaller handgun as the car spirals crazily, screech of tires, eventual tip-over, is Tyler already dead? (disappointing), walking slowly — "It intimidates people," someone told him — car door opening vertical and there's Tyler, the tech, the target, the _motherfucker who pushed him into the chair over and over and told him to comply talked around him said it didn't matter that it hurt but it hurt it kept hurting he's going to hurt him has three fourths of a medical degree an almost fiancee, how come Tyler gets to go home how come everyone gets to go home except—_

"Please," Tyler sobs. There's tear tracks down his face, moonlight glinting off the wetness on his cheeks. "Please, god, please don't, _it was just a job—_ "

He's got a gun to Tyler's temple and he knows he should make this look like an accident, Tyler's lying on the asphalt, dark smear across the road from lacerations, and there's going to be people coming soon, more cars, he's taken too much time, Tyler's face all red and cringing, he likes the way standing over Tyler feels _._

"No," he says, and his finger moves and—

_"Holy fuck," the man says, eyes widening behind his glasses, "Taako?"_

_"Who's Taako?" the Soldier says. He frowns, involuntary, startling himself._

_"How are you alive?" the man says weakly, incredulous, a strange stupid thing to focus on when the Soldier is here to kill him (Assignment: arrange for the death of S. Hallwinter — collateral acceptable), when he's half-crumpled in the seat of his convertible. He'll die if no one else shows up (puncture wound caused by steering column to the upper shoulder, Hallwinter hasn't noticed yet, probably in shock) and his wife is already dead next to him (angle of the neck: unnatural, also yet unnoticed by Hallwinter)._

_The Soldier should just walk away: job close enough to finished, more natural this way, a freak accident caused by a blown out tire._

_"What happened to you?" Hallwinter asks. Labored breathing._

_The Soldier blinks. He's not sure what the answer is to these questions. "Asset frozen between ops," he says, a statement. Is this close enough? He shouldn’t be talking. He’s been trained to respond to direct questions. Hallwinter's facial expressions changes — horror, disgust, these he recognizes._

_"What happened to you?" Hallwinter repeats._

_The Soldier thought Hallwinter was supposed to be smart. He doesn't bother to repeat his answer. He should leave now. Leave the man to bleed out. Slow death, painful, but effective. A long moment where they stare at each other._

_"What's your name?" Hallwinter asks, the tone of his voice changed into something the Soldier can’t read, his eyes narrowed._

_"Asset designated 'Winter Soldier'," The Soldier says._

_Hallwinter's face changing again. The Soldier still doesn’t understand. "Christ," Hallwinter says. "Fucking hell."_

_Something about this is familiar. The Soldier hates being in America, as much as he's capable of hating anything. It always makes something strange inside. He should leave. He's done with the op. The man's going to die. Slow. There'll be hell for the cleanup crew if he pulls the trigger. Harder to make look like an accident._

_Hallwinter is staring at him. He looks like he's in pain. Like a man not used to pain. "Christ," Hallwinter says again, softer. "Get out of here, Soldier, listen, whoever's giving you orders, they're not on your —"_

_The Soldier raises his gun. He shoots._

— He's sitting on a roof, back pressed firmly to a low cement wall that rims the top of the building. He freezes as soon as he realizes that he's not where he remembers being, scrambling because the last thing he remembers is finger on the trigger, Tyler in the car.

He frowns at the grey concrete in front of him, trying to remember what happened, the recent past like a series of flash photographs — blood on the road, dropping the gun, picking up the gun, the dark woods next to the highway — none of this connected. Blanking out completely, a different scene shoving itself _visceral_ into the forefront of his brain: Hallwinter, the car, the kill, the pity, the _talking_ — and now he's sitting here and everything feels too tight and it's late afternoon. Last thing he remembered it was night, so _how did he get here?_

There's loud, choked sounds coming from somewhere nearby. Scratchy, shallow, too-quick breathing. Oh. It's him. His chest feels like its in a vise and he doesn't know why, and he can’t — he can’t just — he has to force himself to breathe, hold in, release, remember the way Lup had said _Taako, just breathe_ , remember her breathing in, out, the exaggerated rise and fall of her shoulders. He tries to match the cadence in his memory, tries to hold onto the feeling of _safety_ , and _fuck_ , how pathetic this is. He’s, he’s supposed to be a weapon. He’s supposed to be good at his _job_ , fuck this — _just breathe,_ in, out —

Slowly his breathing evens out, stops being gasps and turns to slow, deep, breaths. Inhale. Exhale. They're still a little ragged, but at least he can think again.

He closes his eyes and rubs his nose bridge with his metal hand, rubs the steel cool against his skin. Grounding. He bites his lip, a tiny pinprick of pain, negligible in the grand scheme of things. It feels good. He feels present again.

He opens his eyes and focuses on the ground.

Okay. So he lost some time, and now he's sitting on a roof. He thinks he completed the mission — yep, there’s a helpful image of Tyler's head and the hole and the blood dredged up from his brain. He got… a memory? A memory of killing the man who talked, Hallwinter — the thought of it brings rising panic back up, so no, he's not thinking about it anymore, first the practical concerns. He wonders if he lost anything. He hopes he didn’t leave something behind. Not that he’s carrying much.

He looks down at himself. He's not wearing the clothes he began the night in. A new jacket and pants, though the shirt is the same, as are his shoes. He's... warmer. He hadn't realized how cold his previous clothing was. Where are his guns? He pats himself down. Almost all weapons accounted for — one knife missing. An unfamiliar wallet. An expensive looking watch. And in his right jacket pocket, a package. He pulls it out and opens it gingerly, and then stares down at its contents with some bemusement.

Tubrochki. Russian sweets. Some of the crispy rolls are smushed, the cream oozing out. He closes the bag and examines it. There's a logo in Cyrillic on the side. A Russian bakery? He must have visited while he was blacked out. He opens the bag again and sniffs the pastries.

They smell like sugar, like fresh cream and buttery rich pastry. His mouth waters. He takes one out and bites into it, and it's all sweet and rich and crisp and he shoves the rest of the piece in his mouth before pulling out another, and another after that, until the sweets are all gone and his mouth feels sticky.

He's still hungry. He hadn't realized he was hungry.

He shouldn't have taken the time to eat, though. He doesn't even know where he is. He stands and looks over the edge of the wall. Buses, a metro station, people. And _oh,_ D.C. — it says so on the side of a taxi — VISIT HISTORIC D.C. He remembers being here before. The Captain America exhibit. He feels a sudden longing to visit again, but he shouldn't. It's probably being monitored.

He knows the Avengers are after him. This is why he’s been blitzing his way from one base to the next in a shambling sprint. The only thing he has on his side is the element of uncertainty.

He wishes they’d stop following him. He’s handling this. If he handles the Hunger then _they_ won’t need to handle the Hunger, then _Lup_ doesn’t need to see the torture chambers, the labs, the offices where middle-managers decided who was next to die, then brought in takeout for lunch. He smashes rooms filled with beakers and vials filled with blood samples. He burns files on suspected enhanced children born in the tri-state area. He leaves corpses where they fall, knives embedded in their jugulars. He doesn’t bother to hide the fingerprints left by his flesh hand.

He kills men on dark highways by shooting their tires and then their temples.

There is a sick feeling in his stomach. He doesn't think it's the sweets.

He remembers: the fear on their faces. The animal satisfaction. Tyler's face. Hallwinter's face. What was the difference?

He remembers: he was always the one to do the dirty work.

He didn’t like it — _doesn’t_ like it.

#

Lup is going over the Winter Soldier files for the thousandth time. It's so late that it’s early, but she's on her fourth cup of coffee anyway. She's _Captain America_ , she doesn't need to sleep. That's one of the things Cap says in the original comic book series. Lup, on the other hand, woke up in the middle of the night, jolted up by the same stupid nightmare she has all the time.

Someone she loves is falling from the train in the Alps, and she can't catch them.

Tonight was the original version — Taako slipping away, his hand two inches from hers.

After that, she was kind of done with sleeping for the night. She wriggled out of Barry's embrace and out of his bed, careful not to wake him. She threw on a sweatshirt and headed to the workshop where the files they're working on are kept on a separate hard drive. Hallwinter tower has great digital security, but, still. She's not eager for the information that Taako has been leaving them on flash drives to be added to the online repository that she uploaded. It’s maybe a little hypocritical of her — and maybe useless, considering the SHIELD infodump included a fair amount about the Winter Soldier — but she needs to protect Taako somehow.

The Winter Soldier files are a small fraction of the total Hunger data, but when projected by JARVIS across one of the large tables in the workshop, they still take up an inordinate amount of space. She waves her hand to fan them out neatly.

None of the Winter Soldier files mention Taako’s name. There’s no mention of Taako Taaco in them at all, other than as Lup’s brother. It’s a quirk unique among all assets and operatives — Kravitz, RQ, Killian, Carey, Lup, even _Lucretia_ , all their information has been online since the day the Helicarriers crashed.

Lup’s PR team had been _so_ mad at her.

They’re usually mad at her. Well, not mad, but _exasperated_. "You have to _tell_ us things, Cap," is their continual refrain. Lup's not great at telling them things before she does them — sometimes she feels kind of bad about it.

The infodump didn't compromise her that much, though. Not compared to everyone else. Lup’s life is catalogued extensively, the subject of multiple television shows, college courses, novels and retrospective documentaries. The files that SHIELD had on her only confirmed what everyone already thought they knew.

The video of Lup unthawing went viral after it was uploaded and someone posted the link to r/history. The only evidence of the Winter Soldier’s cryogenic decanting are some blurry photos of Taako being frozen.

The clearest photo: A headshot of Taako in the tank. Frost obscures the clarity of his facial features, but Lup recognizes the curve of his nose, the shape of his chin — all nearly identical to her own. He looks like he’s sleeping. He looks like a statue. The photograph makes her want to punch something.

Most of the photos are like that. Blurry snapshots of medical procedures. Taako in the chair. Schematics of Taako's arm. Nothing modern, as if the Hunger simply stopped documenting things after the eighties. Some of the older photos, though, almost hurt to look at — they look more like her brother.

Like the one labeled _WS suiting up for Brussels Op_. The picture is taken from behind, Taako clearly doesn’t realize he’s being photographed. He has a rifle is slung across his back and he's in the middle of braiding his hair, his hands mismatched metal and flesh. Only the barest slice of his face is visible, but Lup can see the edge of his cheek pulled up into a smile. He's looking at someone offscreen. She knows its a _someone_ because their hand is visible, holding out a pair of gloves for Taako to put on after fixing his hair.

The smile makes her hope he was happy, at least for a little bit, while the Hunger had him. It makes her hope that Taako was _Taako_ sometimes — not the emotionless man she fought in the helicarrier, not the unfeeling operative Kravitz describes. It’s probably wrong to want that, but this is her brother. She doesn’t care if it’s unethical.

The Winter Soldier reports change over time; the most glaring difference is between reports pre-1980 and post-1980. Most of the pre-1980 reports are written in Cyrillic, which JARVIS helpfully provided translations for, and not many have survived. They’re filled not just with murder, but with infiltrations, interrogations, late-night threats. Not just assassination but the _threat_ of assassination, the Winter Soldier as the Soviet bogeyman.

It's creepy, and it's exactly the sort of thing that Taako did to the Hunger when he was wearing the Captain America suit. It’s the sort of work that needs a personality.

Then in the 1980's the missions change, and suddenly it's _all_ murder. There are no more photographs of her brother smiling. Something happened during the eighties — there are mentions of "asset transfer" and "relocation," complaints and memos about moving equipment dated to the mid-eighties, even though the Hunger was careful not to mention specific names and locations. But the lack of specificity doesn't mask the fact that the documents are suddenly written in English, that domestic missions took place in a rough radius around Washington D.C. International missions are present, but scattershot — Iran, North Korea, Hungary — kills on pretty much every single continent.

It means Taako is more used to being in the United States now. She doesn't think he left the country. There's no way Taako would get on a commercial airline without them getting a ping, and since he left the Tower, all his kills have been domestic anyway. He hasn't even left the eastern seaboard.

"JARVIS, remove everything pre-1980 and everything international."

"Certainly, Captain."

Two-thirds of the documents disappear. She frowns. It's still a formidable pile. "Can you get rid of anything that corresponds to a base we cleared or that SHIELD has looked into?"

"Of course," JARVIS says, and another half of the documents disappear.

"Can you outline new information in blue, stuff from the Helicarrier dump in red, and separate everything?"

"Right away," JARVIS confirms, and the rest of the documents sort themselves neatly into two piles. She waves the blue files over to her. Still more than is reasonable to go through alone, but like hell is she letting any stone go unturned.

Besides, Taako left these for them. For her. She doesn't know what he's trying to say.

First, the fact that he leaves them information. How does she decode that? Is it tacit approval of her mad chase after him? Is he just resigned to her following? Does he mean to leave this for _any_ authority, not just the Avengers? Maybe he doesn't care that it's _her_. Does he want to be caught? Why hasn’t he gone further than the east coast? Is this supposed to make up for his absence? Is this some sort of _penance?_ Taako isn't one for guilt, but maybe he's changed. Does he even _know_ that she's chasing him?

And the information contained within the files he leaves behind. It's data about the bases — unfiltered and uncategorized. There are detailed descriptions of what the Hunger did to him. Is this his way of telling her what happened? Telling anyone? Is he just giving them these because he's trying to be helpful, and nothing else? What does he expect her to do with the information? Does he mean to be obscure? What is he trying to _say_?

Lup wishes she could just catch up to him and _ask_.

But for now, this is the closest thing she's got to having a conversation with her brother. She waves a hand over the blue files and fans them out across the table, tapping the ones nearest to her to open them.

The files are... brutal. The last base they cleared was... well, the sanitized thing that could be said is that the work they were doing was _experimental_. A more accurate assessment is that they were torture chambers. All the machinery had been smashed when they arrived, Taako’s flash drive left precariously on top of a busted monitor.

The files detail the experimentation the Hunger did in clinical detail — not just on Taako, there are other subjects — but Taako is always referred to as _WS Asset_ , so it's easy to hone in on the parts about him.

It would be really easy for Lup to get angry, how _dare_ the Hunger put a hand on her brother, she's going to find every one of the bastards that did this to him and _tear them down_ — it would be _so_ easy, but that's not what Taako needs from her right now. Taako needs her to find him.

Or, _Lup_ needs to find Taako.

She skims the files and sorts the ones that seem important into a separate folder. JARVIS could pick out the relevant pieces of data for her, but it _feels_ better to do it by hand, to make sure that she's not missing anything.

Lup knows that she's being obsessive about this. She knows that it isn't exactly healthy, the amount of time she's been spending on trying to piece together the patchwork of Taako's trauma. Lup knows that she's being _kind of a crazy person_ about trying to figure out where he's going, what he's doing, whether he's okay. But Taako's her twin brother. He's the other half of her heart. Trying to figure out how to exist without him was like learning how to function with only one lung, and _sure,_ it was workable, but it was still hard as hell to breathe.

Getting him back, even with everything, it was like taking a deep breath for the first time in two years. Even if he doesn't remember her completely. Even if he _never_ remembers her completely.

Lup really hope he remembers.

The files she skims through are awful. The pile she isolates is much smaller than the one she started with, narrowed down to anything that references the WS Asset, or refers to a secondary location. Lup frowns.

Does he still think the same, she wonders. He used to be so predictable to her. She always knew what he was going to do, even before he did it — and it was the same for her. It drove them crazy, sometimes, before the war. They fought a lot, and she remembers those fights fondly, even though at the time they were frustrating as all hell.

She can't know what he's thinking. She can only speculate. But her speculation, a wish and a prayer, that's all she has to go on now. Lup fans open the smaller pile.

"JARVIS, isolate any place names, please. Or any mention of transport."

"Here you are, Captain." highlights suddenly appear across the pages. She pulls the passages out and spreads them out in front of her. There are a few repeated locations across the pages. One in NYC. One in D.C. One in Jersey City. One in Boston. The words " _storage facilities_ " pop up every so often in conjunction. She nixes the D.C. and NYC locations. The D.C. one was already trashed, and the NYC one is too close to home. He's staying out of Manhattan. So either Boston or Jersey City.

Jersey City is close. But maybe too close. Too _obvious_. The one in Boston is also a bigger facility, it sounds like from the writing. He'll have to hit both places either way. It'd be smarter to head north, and double back, that would increase the radius that the Avengers would have to search significantly.

Lup taps her fingers against the table.

If she were Taako, if she was her brainwashed, angry brother out to get the people who hurt them, if she was the one who realized that the people who were using her were the bad guys, if she didn't have any specific target other than "burn it all down" then —

Yeah. He's going to go after the closer target.

#

Kravitz is sitting on the floor of RQ and Istus’s living room, letting RQ re-twist the roots of his locs, when his phone starts vibrating on the coffee table. It’s been a day since the Senate Hearing. He’s been expecting a call from Lup and Barry about it — maybe one from Lucretia too, although he suspects RQ will report to her for him — but it was nice of them to give him some time to unwind. He’s been trying not to think about it. Realizing that Taako is doing what Kravitz did — hunting down the people who hurt him — was a good distraction from the fact that his face is on the cover of every newspaper in America right now.

Kravitz is a spy, except he’s not anymore. He can’t _be_ a spy when everything about him is now so thoroughly known by the world. SHIELD is gone and his cover is blown. Kravitz is still an Avenger, but the truth of the matter is there aren’t a lot of jobs that require a superhero, and when there are they tend to need someone with a little more firepower than Kravitz has at his disposal.

RQ and Istus’s apartment is a nice break from the real world.

“Can you pass me my phone?” he asks, trying not to move his head away from RQ’s ministrations. “I can’t reach.”

“My hands are full,” RQ says. “They can call back.”

“It might be important.” Kravitz reaches for his phone, straining against RQ’s grip on his head as he tries to get it. “If they’re going on another raid they might need me.”

“Stop _squirming_ , Krav. Do you want me to break your hair?” RQ says, kicking his side gently with a slippered foot. “It’s Cap and Iron Man. I think they’ll be okay taking out _one_ Hunger base without you.”

“Lup won’t _hit_ her brother. He almost killed her last time, so —”

“And _you_ got shot,” says RQ. “How’s your shoulder doing?”

Kravitz’s shoulder is much better than most people’s would be. The wound has closed up and there’s no permanent damage. His left side _is_ still noticeably weaker though, at least to him. He hasn’t had time to rehabilitate himself completely. “It’s _fine_.” The phone stops vibrating. “Raven, I missed the call.”

“Call them back later,” says RQ. “You said the Soldier was pulling a you. They’ll be fine. He’s not out to hurt Lup and Barry. He’s killing Nazis and I can’t bring myself to object to that. _Relax_ and let me finish.”

Kravitz squirms, trying to get a couple extra millimetres of reach by leaving his head in RQ’s grip while shifting the rest of his body forward. “But what if —”

“Really?” Istus asks, standing in the living room doorway. She walks to the coffee table and picks up Kravitz’s phone, handing it to him. “I am not your mom. Please don’t make me tell you to stop bickering.”

RQ grins up at Istus. “Love you,” she says. “Sorry, babe.”

“Thank you,” Kravitz says, looking down at his phone. As predicted, he has one missed call from Lup. “She started it.”

“ _I’m_ finishing it.” Istus leans over Kravitz to give RQ a quick peck on the lips.

Kravitz ignores them in favor of calling Lup back. His phone barely has time to ring before she picks up.

“Krav!” Lup sounds excited, which makes Kravitz sit up straighter. There are only so many things that she’s going to sound this happy about right now, and all of them are Taako related. When he said he thought Taako was going to come back, he didn’t think it would be this soon.

“Lup? Is everything okay?” RQ and Istus go quiet above him and he looks up, frowning at them for listening in on his call.

RQ sticks her tongue out at him.

“It’s fine, babe,” Lup says. “More or less. How are _you_? Are you good? We watched the hearing. You did a great job.” She rushes through the niceties, obviously trying to get small talk out of the way.

“Thanks,” says Kravitz. “I’m fine. I’m with RQ and Istus. Lup, what’s up? This isn’t a social call.”

“Caught me,” Lup says, laughing a little. “It’s — I know where he’s going, Krav. I know the next location Taako is going to hit. It’s in Jersey City. There’s a base near —” Lup cuts herself off. Maybe she’s finally learning to listen to him when he tells her she shouldn’t just repeat sensitive information over the phone. “I know you were going to take some time to visit after the hearing, but how would you feel about taking a trip to New Jersey with me?”

Kravitz owes RQ and Istus this visit. He’s supposed to stay for at least a week. He’s at least got to let RQ finish retwisting his hair or she’s going to kill him. It’s a four hour drive back up to the city. Maybe a little less, in Barry’s car with it’s anti-speed trap tech.

There’s no way he’s letting Lup go after Taako without him.

“Am I meeting you at the Tower or in Jersey?”

“I’ll come get you,” Lup says. “It’ll still be faster than you driving. This is the closest we’ve come to catching him, Krav. Barry’s got JARVIS tapping into every security feed in the area around the building he can. Taako’s not _there_ yet. If we move fast, we can beat him.”

If Lup’s right about where Taako is going, then she’s right about the rest of it too — this is the closest they’ve gotten to catching him since he left Hallwinter Tower. Kravitz still thinks Taako would come back, if they gave him time, but Lup’s not going to want to hear that Taako just needs to finish his murder tour and then he’ll come back. She’ll keep chasing Taako no matter what.

Kravitz hasn’t been great at supporting her so far. Privately he thinks Jersey City is an unlikely target — too close to Manhattan and Lup to fit with Taako’s M.O. so far. But when Lup sets her mind on something, it’s hard to get her to change it. “Come get me,” he says. “I’ll be ready. The last time we went to Jersey the Hunger dropped a building on our heads. You’re going to need backup.”

#

His stomach feels sick and he still wants more sweets. He’s lost a day, maybe more. So much for an easy detour. Killing Tyler Richardson was supposed to be a nice break from the labs before he started hitting bases where he was held. He doesn’t like going there. They’re where he was unmade. Where Taako was unmade and shaped into this — into him.

He takes a deep breath. He swallows the sick feeling. He can’t go to the D.C. base — too easily intercepted. He can’t go to New York for the same reason. Boston is too far. He thinks he’ll lose his nerve before he manages to get there. So, by process of elimination, Jersey City.

Back to work.

He knows what he’ll find when he gets there — the chair, the tank. A part of him wants to curl up and stay on this rooftop instead.

He’ll get himself a pastry after this base. A reward. They used to give him sweets when he did well. But now he can buy his own fucking croissant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos keep us working on getting our edits out to you on schedule. <3
> 
> You can find us on tumblr, where we're [@anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [@marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)! We'd love to hear from you!


	17. The Shadow of the Valley of Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: The second section of this chapter includes a mention of suicidal ideation from the narrator's POV.

Lup’s glad the helijet has an autopilot function because she’s not sure she could safely pilot it. Her hands won’t stop shaking. She’s _certain_ that Taako’s already headed to Jersey City and her brain is screaming that she’s going the _wrong way_ , that she shouldn’t be headed to D.C. to pick Kravitz up — that she should say _fuck backup_ and head straight for the base because _what if she misses Taako_. She’s not sure she’d make it to D.C. if she was the one driving.

Lup sits in the back of the helijet and goes over her files again. She focuses on strategy — it doesn’t make sense to go to a Hunger base without backup. Barry could come, but Kravitz is better at infiltration. He’s a spy. If they manage to beat Taako to the base, she doesn’t want to tip him off that they’re there. If she went alone, she’d definitely clue him in, and he’d bolt. If she took him in a fight, she’s not sure which of them would win. She already knows she’s not going to fight him. If they’re going to bring him home, that means having the element of surprise on their hands — she can’t talk to Taako if he runs before she gets a chance to see him.

She’s been trying to catch Taako since 1944. She’s not going to let the Hunger get him again.

The helijet lands on top of RQ and Istus’s apartment building. Lup’d kind of been hoping Kravitz would be on the roof waiting for her, ready to hop into the jet so they could head out, but there’s no one there. Just a patch of concrete.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. Lup pulls it out to glance at the screen — it’s a text from Kravitz: _OMW._

At least he’s not wasting time spelling out whole words.

Lup tucks her phone away again and opens the back of the helijet. She can’t stop fidgeting. Waiting for Kravitz to walk up the stairs isn’t going to kill her, even if the nagging need to _go_ sits at the back of her mind, making every second that passes feel like an hour. It’s fine.

The roof access door opens up and Kravitz steps out, RQ and Istus. RQ raises a hand in greeting. She’s wearing pajama pants and a purple sweater, hair wrapped up in a satin scarf. It occurs to Lup that she probably could have asked RQ for backup on this mission too, but she was so focused on Taako that she’d kind of — forgotten. She hadn’t even known that RQ was back in the country.

“Hey, Cap,” RQ says. “Kravitz says you had a breakthrough?”

“He’s going to Jersey City,” Lup says. “There’s a Hunger base there we haven’t cleared yet.”

“Jersey City is awfully close to Manhattan, Lup,” Kravitz says, taking an elastic from Istus offers him so he can tie up his hair. “Are you _sure_ that’s where he’s going?”

Lup had time to go over her reasoning on the way down from Manhattan, examining her theory from all angles, making sure her logic made sense, and it does. Maybe not to other people — people who don’t know Taako — but she knows her brother.

Taako’s clever and strategic — an excellent tactician. The history books like to focus on that, but they miss the part where he’s _impatient_ as all fuck too. Everyone writes Taako as being willing to wait. Twenty-four years of living with the guy make Lup uniquely qualified to say that he definitely isn’t. Taako isn’t the Winter Soldier anymore — or not fully, anyway. He’s reclaiming himself one dead Hunger agent at a time and that means he’s no longer some cold, unfeeling supersoldier. He’s angry and he’s lost and he’s lashing out. He’s getting _revenge_.

“I’m sure,” Lup says. “He’s — you might know the Winter Soldier, Krav, but I know _Taako_ and that’s who we’re chasing now. He’s gonna be in Jersey.”

She can tell Kravitz is still skeptical. He nods anyway. “If you’re sure, I trust your instincts.”

“I’m sure.”

“Cool,” says RQ, and then pats Kravitz on the back. “Krav, you better come back and visit us again soon. You still owe us a week and a half.”

“You need to take a break more often.” Istus, wrapped up cozily in a cardigan that looks about two sizes too big for her, offers Kravitz a hug. “We get it, you’re a superhero now — but RQ still finds time to come home.”

Kravitz hugs Istus back. “I’ll visit again soon,” he promises. “I’m _fine_.”

“Uh-huh.” RQ gives Kravitz a skeptical look. “Totally fine. Sure I shouldn’t come?”

Kravitz rolls his eyes and gives RQ a hug too. “I’ll let you know how the mission goes. Good luck with whatever Lucretia’s got you doing now.”

“I think I’m on vacation,” RQ says, shrugging. “Or unemployed? Hard to say, considering the whole, you know, SHIELD being run by Nazis thing. I figure I’ll hang until Lucretia reaches out to me. You two gonna be good?”

“They’ll be fine,” Istus says, wrapping an arm around RQ’s waist. She smiles at Lup. “Good luck with your brother.”

Lup likes Istus a lot. Her and RQ are cute. If they had more time, Lup would linger on the roof so she could tease Kravitz about them walking him to the jet and hugging him goodbye. She knows they’re his family already, but it’s _so_ domestic.

It’s nice that Kravitz has this. Lup’s sorry to be pulling him away so soon after the hearings, but they need to move if they’re gonna catch Taako. “I’ll bring him down to visit,” Lup says, with more confidence than she feels. “Once he’s a little less, uh, murderous.”

“I wrote a book report on him when I was a kid,” RQ says. “I thought he was cool.”

Taako will be _so smug_ if he ever finds that out. He’ll be unbearable. Lup can’t fuckin’ wait. She grins at RQ. “You can tell him all about it. He’ll _love_ you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” RQ smiles back at her. “Seems like being on his good side is the right move. Fly safely, kids.”

“I’m older than you,” Kravitz says, flicking RQ’s arm on his way up the ramp into the helijet.

“Don’t stay out past your curfew!” RQ calls after him. “Make good choices!”

Kravitz flips her off and she laughs, turning her attention back to Lup. “Seriously, Cap. I’d love to meet him, when he’s ready to be met. Good luck out there.”

When Taako’s ready. Right. Taako’s been through a lot. The man they bring back to Manhattan might not be the Taako she remembers. He’ll probably need time to heal. Maybe a lot of it.

Lup and Kravitz are going to need all the luck they can get. Lup still has faith in her hunch and in their abilities.

“Thanks,” she says. “But I think Istus is right — we’re going to be fine.”

#

He takes a train to Jersey City, just another anonymous face with an upturned collar, hands scrunched securely in his coat pockets. He’s cold all the time, even with the new clothes. His metal arm is always cold, too. The coat gives him some bulk. He’s lost weight. It’s good — more space to hide weapons. He has three guns holstered underneath it, a knife up each sleeve and at the small of his back, one in each boot. Lockpicks, a blowdart, a swiss army knife he picked up for the hell of it.

The Hunger base is near the train station. He had held off on visiting because Jersey City is across from Manhattan, too close to the Avengers for comfort. He’s held off on visiting because of — He shivers. He’s running out of bases, though. He feels on edge — more so than usual. When he looks out the window he can see Hallwinter Tower and its massive “A.” A thought rises unbidden — he hopes Lup is there, and not out looking for him. He crushes it.

The train comes to a shuddering stop. NJ TRANSIT, THIS STOP IS: JERSEY CITY, a pleasant woman’s voice says. He stands, hefting his backpack on his shoulders. He exits the train in the crowd. The rustle of fabric, shoes slapping against the linoleum. Too many people. He doesn’t do well in crowds. He’s not that sort of spy. He filches a candy bar from someone’s purse anyway, munching it as he heads toward the base. He sticks the wrapper in his coat pocket instead of throwing it out.

Sidewalks. More people. Keeping his head down and his ears alert until —

The Hunger base looks like any other building. Kind of grimy. There’s something strange, though. It takes him a moment to realize — the windows are lit up in a pattern. Morse code. Two windows for a dash. Single window for a dot. A simple code, one his handlers used years ago. He sits on a bench across the street to puzzle out the message.

.-- . .-.. -.-. --- -- .

It reads “Welcome.”

He frowns. There must be a Hunger agent inside. One that knows that someone is snuffing bases out, one by one. Maybe one of his handlers. The last rat on the sinking ship, scrounging at the crumbs. Or maybe waiting for him. A trap? For him, or for the Avengers? It doesn’t matter.

He walks in through the front door.

The first floor opens into a sterile lobby. Nobody at the desk, the lights dim. Dimmer than they should be during the workday. The morse code was a sign, then. This confirms it. He doesn’t draw a weapon yet. No point broadcasting his tells. He walks with purpose, like the Winter Soldier walks.

If it is a trap for him, it will not be on the first floor. If it is a trap for Captain America, they will be underestimating her. They think she’s a relic. He knows better. She’d easily escape any trap they set for her, and by extension, he’ll be able to escape too. It’s _no big fucking deal._

Nothing happens as he walks across the lobby. No lights flicker ominously, no operatives spring out from the ceiling or from behind a false wall. No music or voice blare from the intercom. He supposes the Hunger isn’t bothering with psychological warfare against an asset. They probably have something more elegant than a fistfight for him. Maybe he’s culled their ranks to the point that overpowering him with their forces is unlikely.

He stands in front of the elevator and presses the down button. It dings.

All Hunger bases have a standardized elevator protocol. The upper floors are for legitimate businesses, sometimes fronts, sometimes SHIELD offices, sometimes poor saps who don’t know their basement is being colonized by an international terrorist organization.

He presses 8 twice, B1, 8 twice again, the close button, and jams himself against the wall that the entrance is situated on. If there are combatants, they’ll see an empty elevator, which should give him a few moments to get the drop on them. The elevator moves smoothly downward, further than just going to the basement would suggest. He does not know how deep Hunger builds their bases. It always takes a full minute for him to descend.

The elevator door opens.

The base is empty. Tidy. Desks and chairs and the detritus of meetings. He cannot hear anyone. He steps out. He does not bother to gentle the sound of his boots. The elevator had dinged.

He circles the whole floor. It is deserted. Quiet, and only the sound of his own breath to keep him company. At the westernmost end of the floor, there is a door. It is labeled “AUTHORIZED TECHNICIANS ONLY.”

The bottom drops out of his stomach. He knows what is behind that door. Leaving is starting to look good.

Behind the door is the Chair. It receives the capitalization in his mind. The Chair is where they would strap him down like a dumb animal and they would tilt his head back and press a mouthguard between his teeth and the headpiece to his skull, the electrodes hovering above his scalp, and he would close his eyes. They would tell him, “Keep your eyes closed, Soldier,” and he remembers in the past they would tell him in Russian, “This is a gift we are giving you, Soldier, the dreamless sleep,” and he would acquiesce, as pliant as a child, except when he had to be dragged there because of a nightmarish terror pulsing its way through his veins, and then he would be sedated and strapped down, and when he awoke they would tell him “Keep your eyes closed, Soldier,” and he would acquiesce because he does not remember what else he was supposed to do. He could not want.

He remembers this now. It turns his blood to ice.

But it would be good after the Procedure. There would be a strange clarity in his mind, a haziness that was almost euphoric. It wouldn’t matter that they were putting him in cryofreeze, that the technicians were manhandling him as he stared into the middle distance. He wouldn’t remember their names, or the details of his last mission.

They’d press him into the chamber and close the clear door over him, and they’d tell him “Keep your eyes closed, Soldier, and hold your breath,” and he would watch the frost patterns on the glass until his eyelids grew too heavy to keep up and the numbness spread its way up his fingers and down his chest, the cold like a blanket pulled over him.

Then he would feel nothing at all.

There must be a Tube behind the door as well. He wonders if it is not too late to leave the base, to jam himself back in the elevator and ride it to the top floor and shatter a window and jump out, with all his knives and guns weighing him down until — splat! He killed three or four men this way, years ago. It is easy to fake a suicide. A suicide would be preferable to the Chair, the Tube. He grimaces at the thought of it, rising unbidden in his mind.

That would be visible. That would catch Captain America’s attention, and if she comes to this base, the Hunger might capture her, and then it would be Lup in the Chair, sedated, closing her eyes — Lup in the Tube.

So there’s no easy out. Nowhere to go but through. He swallows nervously. A tic, one burned out of him years ago. Resurfacing. He’s growing sloppy. Soon he won’t be the greatest assassin in the world anymore, even if that’s all stupid fucking _propaganda._

He opens the door.

The Chair. The Tube. Both loom in front of him, shadowed in the half light. The lab is dimly lit, like every other room he’s been through. He walks in, and like the crack of a gunshot cutting through the silence that hung heavy over the rest of the building, he hears clapping.

He whips out a handgun and points it at the direction of the noise, pulling the trigger.

The bullet smashes through a speaker.

“Ah, Soldier, always so eager,” a voice says fondly from the opposite corner. “Sorry, just one of my little tricks.”

When he turns towards the voice, it resolves into a man, sitting behind a laptop in the far corner of the room. The man’s face is unfamiliar — he’s wearing a well-tailored suit. He’s a stranger, but there’s something about him that is _reminiscent._

He points his gun at the man, but doesn’t shoot. There must be more tricks. This voice is familiar. It is one of his old handlers, he realizes. One who often stood over him while he was wiped. Who gave him mission dossiers and told him almost languidly to _get the job done._ Who sometimes gave him sweets after a mission well completed. He’d wanted those candies badly. He couldn’t fathom the idea of buying them for himself.

“I thought about waiting in a swivel chair and turning to greet you, but it seemed awfully melodramatic,” the handler says. He’s never known this man’s name. “Did you get my message?”

The Soldier does not say anything. He keeps his aim steady. The handler closes his laptop.

“I’ll admit, that was rather dramatic of me as well, but sometimes you have to have fun with these assignments or what’s the point? It doesn’t really matter, does it? You’re here. That’s all I needed, so — _Sputnik. Nightshade. Ichor_.”

The handler’s voice turns cold and precise with his last three words. He enunciates correctly. The Soldier feels his muscles grow slack. He falls to the floor in a heap, still reeling from the cascade trigger bouncing its way around his skull. The tile is cool under his cheek, smashed against it. His bones ache. His head hurts where it hit the floor.

He hadn’t remembered the triggers. He hadn’t remembered that he had triggers at all. His brain is a like a sieve, like a fruitcake studded with nuts, and what’s the fucking _use_ of it if he keeps _forgetting important shit!_ These were old phrases, all in Russian, ones that turned his bones to water, ones that left him loose and helpless, ones that dropped him to the floor like all his strings were cut. A contingency plan for his handlers.

He hears footsteps as the handler walking closer. Strong hands grip him underneath the armpits, hauling him, head lolling, toward the chair. If he could physically hyperventilate, he would, but the trigger words smooth everything over. His bodily functions are not his own. He feels... small. Of _course_ he would be caught. There was no other choice. He is always returned to the Tube. He is a weapon. He should not have dared to want.

His boots scrape against the floor. His handgun is left sitting on the floor like a stone.

The handler chats idly as he lifts the Soldier into the chair. "Thank goodness that worked, don't know what I would have done if it hadn't." He places the Soldier solidly into the seat, lifts the dead weight of the Soldier's thighs and jostles him into position. "You've been quite naughty, Soldier. What do you do when you’re let loose? You turn on your handlers. That isn't your place."

He strips off the Soldier's shirt, not without some awkwardness. He places electrodes in strategic locations. He puts an arm on each armrest. Straps them both down. Winds a strap around the Soldier's stomach. "No, your place is right here." He taps the Soldier's bare stomach playfully, then runs a hand over the Soldier's ribs. He frowns.

"Not so good at taking care of yourself, are you? What have you been eating? Or rather, what _haven't_ you?" He laughs at his own joke. "Easily fixed, I suppose."

The handler turns to the machinery. Presumably he presses some buttons. The Soldier cannot see. He is stuck staring at the ceiling. At least the handler has not clamped the headpiece down. "One moment, Soldier," the handler calls. "It needs to warm up. And I’ve forgotten your mouthguard. Not that you need your tongue."

More sounds of puttering. The handler hums. The Soldier does not move. The Soldier's mind feels like a black pit. He should have put himself down the moment he left the tower. Stupid. How could he forget. How could he not? _What else is he forgetting?_

The handler returns.

"The Hunger is dead. Well, dying," the handler says, conversational, as if he is remarking on the weather. He opens the Soldier's mouth and slips the mouthguard between his teeth. He forces him to bite. "But you and I, we’ll do quite well for ourselves. There’s all sorts of _opportunities_ , these days, if you’ve got the right publicity. Perhaps we take out the Avengers first. I’m sure they’re coming for you. The Captain has been making waves." The handler waves carelessly. "Soldiers, playing at being spies."

Sputnik, nightshade, ichor. A trigger cascade a half century old. A passphrase from another era. The Soldier is a couple months out of cryo. This is longer than any time since 1966. The Soldier has grown new cells. The Soldier has pruned away old ones. The Soldier is jolting to attention because if this bastard thinks that he's gonna use Taako to attack Lup, he's got another thing coming — that's his fucking sister. That's the other half of his fucking heart. That's the _only good thing left_ in the godforsaken fucked-up hellscape that is his life — homeboy's gonna find himself on the wrong fuckin' end of a sniper rifle with a face full of _wham_.

And Taako's metal arm shoots upward. It snaps the restraint around its wrist. Barry Hallwinter does excellent work. Taako’s metal fingers clench around the handler's neck. The handler chokes. His eyes bug out. He scrambles against the arm. It is unyielding. The handler wheezes. Taako tries to lift his other arm, move his head. He can’t. Only the metal one, the one they gave them, and how’s that for dramatic irony, you _motherfuckers_?

"Soldier, you don't know what you are doing. You have been criminally misused. We take it away. Start fresh. Clean slate. It is what you were made for." The handler’s voice is raspy, urgent, as his hands scrabble for purchase on the arm.

"Not Lup," Taako says. He realizes he can speak, even if the words are awkward in his mouth.

"You want to defect? They've offered you sanctuary? Don't be an idiot! What do they want you for? Better the devil you know, Soldier." The handler grins a rictus grin. He’s wheezing. "Come now. We’ve always been friends."

The sentence ends more like a sigh than a statement. Taako needs to snap the handler's neck. Taako’s tired of snapping necks. If he doesn’t snap the handler's neck,if he chokes him to unconsciousness and lets him go, the handler might awaken before Taako has full control over his faculties. This would _suck_.

The handler smiles wider. "She will use you as well, Soldier, and ba —"

Taako crushes his hand closed. There is an audible snap. The sharp edge of Taako's hand pierces the handler’s throat — his jugular — spurting blood.

Taako still can’t move, but he loosens his grip on the now limp body, with it’s skull like a bobblehead, in his hand. It falls on his legs and stays there. He can feel the warm, wet weight of it, like a lover. He still cannot look down. He can’t wipe the blood off his face.

"She wouldn't do that," Taako mumbles to no one. "I'm not your fucking friend."

The handler's corpse bleeds out, all over him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed this chapter, please leave a comment and kudos <3
> 
> We're getting to the comfort part of the h/c, thanks for coming on this ride.
> 
> Come say hello to us on tumblr where we're [anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)!


	18. Homecoming

The door to the base is open. “Good sign, bad sign?” Lup asks quietly.

“Not sure,” Kravitz admits. He thought he’d be able to predict the Winter Soldier’s strategy more easily, but Taako’s been evading him at every turn. He’s vaguely ashamed of that — Kravitz is the only person who had sustained contact with the Winter Soldier — with Taako — since his transformation into a weapon, Kravitz was _trained_ by the man, and still, Taako’s been leading them on a merry chase.

“Let me take point.” Kravitz at least trusts that he’ll recognize a trap.

“Absolutely fucking not,” Lup says, and breezes past him. Kravitz sighs. Lup is the second-most frustrating team leader he’s served under. She never does the _sensible_ thing.

“Lead the way, Cap,” he says, making sure to say that in his driest tone of voice. Lup throws him the bird, and raises her shield. They enter. The lobby is empty.

From the cursory look over the files Lup brought with her that Kravitz did on the flight over, he knows that the facility is superficially similar to the other Hunger bases they’ve knocked down. The Hunger likes to set up in innocuous buildings — an ordinary floor in an office park, a bank on a quiet side-street, a dingy brownstone that everyone’s eyes gloss over. This one is a corporate bank branch office in a no-name building in Jersey City. The lobby is perfectly normal, other than the emptiness. No signs of violence or struggle here. No signs of people. There’s a bank of elevators on the far wall. This, too, is familiar.

“Are we getting in the Nazi elevator?” Lup asks.

“We’re getting in the Nazi elevator,” Kravitz says. If he doesn’t, Lup will keep asking until he answers. What the history books don’t tell you, and what Kravitz finds weirdly endearing, is the fact that Captain America is actually terribly annoying.

“No, you’re not getting in the Nazi elevator,” Barry says over the comms. He’s technically in a board meeting, though whether he’s paying any attention is another question altogether. He offered to come, but it’s a Hunger base in _Jersey City,_ Lup and Kravitz should be able to handle it. “Please don’t get in the Nazi elevator. I’ve got a new toy for you.”

Lup pauses before she hits the “down” button. “Yeah, babe?”

“There’s a flash drive in your belt pocket. Go to the receptionist’s desk, turn on the computer, and stick it in the USB slot?”

Lup complies. A program opens on the desktop. “Oh good,” Barry says.

“What did you do?” Kravitz asks.

“I’ve got access to the network — and the security system, webcams and stuff — one moment, Greg, I’m dealing with a Nazi thing. I mean a Hunger thing. Uh, you know, Iron Man business. Sorry about that. Oh jeez, Hunger did a really hack job, hm?” The sound of typing. “You can get into the Nazi elevator now. Basement’s empty. No sign of Taako.”

Lup and Kravitz get into the Nazi elevator. Kravitz punches in the code to make the elevator deliver them to the sub-basement.

“Does Hunger have something against sunlight, do you think?” Lup says.

Kravitz shrugs. He’s more Reaper than Kravitz, now that they’re firmly in enemy territory.

The elevator door opens. The basement is familiar — the Hunger’s office layouts are all the same. Standardization. SHIELD was the same way. Rows of empty desks and grey filing cabinets. It’s eerily empty down here too. Not like the base was abandoned — like someone knew they were coming. There are still papers and knick knacks on desks, all set neatly aside like everyone in the office just took the day off, but expected to be back at work tomorrow.

“I’m already downloading the digital files,” Barry says. “This should make clearing base faster.”

“We’ll grab the hard copies,” Kravitz says. Lup is already shuffling through file-folders. Kravitz decides to take a lap around the perimeter, see if there’s anything novel about the sub-basement. It’s strange being here before the Soldier.

The Soldier had left quite the bloody trail behind him, through the cities and the towns, rooms filled with blood and bone. Something feels _wrong,_ down here.

Kravitz doesn’t know what, but decades in the business have taught him to trust his gut. He scans the desks as he walks but there is nothing that immediately seems out of place. Maybe he won’t find anything, and later they’ll send in another team to strip the place down to its bolts, Barry sending the SHIELD agents that he’s taken under Hallwinter Industry’s wing to process and catalogue it all and hush everything up.

Then Kravitz sees the door. “AUTHORIZED TECHNICIANS ONLY” is emblazoned in bright red letters. For a second, he wonders why it seems familiar — then remembers. The vault in DC. The cryotube behind it. The chair they placed the Soldier in to wipe his memories — the same equipment the Red Room used. A triple-layer memory. But “technicians” for what? It doesn’t necessarily have to be the cryotube, the chair. Kravitz hopes for the Soldier’s sake that there’s some other machinery inside.

“What’s behind that door?” he asks Barry. A long pause before Barry answers. “What door?”

“There’s a door, says “authorized technicians only” in red, across from the desks?”

Typing. “It must be in a blind spot,” Barry says. “No cameras behind it.”

“You find something?” Lup calls from across the room.

“I think so,” Kravitz responds. “Barry says there’s no cameras in there.”

“Well. Might be a trap,” Lup says. She sounds excited. He knows that she’s been frustrated by the lack of progress they’ve been making, riding on the Winter Soldier’s coattails. She must be spoiling for a fight.

“Might be,” Kravitz responds.

“Ladies first,” Lup says, and kicks the door in, raising her shield.

#

Bullets strike the shield as soon as the door goes down — small caliber, not enough force to even make the shield buckle. They drop to the floor and Lup raises the shield to send it flying in the direction the bullets came from, except when she moves her arm, she sees the tableau in front of her — the chair and the blood and the body and her brother.

Taako, half-dressed and curled up in the awful contraption, like he's too scared to walk away, covered in blood — it clings to his chest, it’s soaked through his pants and smeared on his arms, all the way up his metal fingers. The body of some Hunger goon lies in front of him, his neck at an unnatural angle. Taako looks like a caricature of a serial killer, looks like a murder victim brought back to life.

He's got his handgun pointed straight at her, but his eyes widen and he drops it like a hot coal as soon as he sees her on the other side of the door. It hits the ground. The smallest splash of red.

She drops the shield instantly. Oh God. She could have bashed his head in. She could have killed him. This is the first time she's seen him since he ran from the tower and she could have slammed his brains out, and — why is he shirtless? Why is he covered in blood? He's sitting in the godawful device that takes away his memories — what was that bastard lying at Taako’s feet trying to _do?_ Is any of the blood _Taako’s?_

He's here. Taako's _here._ "Taako," Lup says. "Oh fuck, _Taako_."

He doesn't move. She steps forward.

"Lup," Kravitz says — a warning wrapped in a word. She doesn't spare him a glance. Kravitz keeps talking. "We don't know what they did to him. Our comms went dead when we came in the room.” His voice is steady — too steady. He's all business now. He’s right about Barry not being in their ear anymore, but Lup doesn’t want to listen. "The chair, you shouldn't —" He hesitates, like he realizes the futility of what he's saying. Lup continues to ignore him.

"Do you remember me?" Lup asks softly, because Kravitz does have a point — she hadn't thought about Taako’s brain being scrambled. She’d assumed that since Taako killed the goon, he escaped reprogramming. But if he had, why would he still be here? Why wouldn't he have cleaned up? Ghosted? She hadn’t even known he was here. This is the first time they've been able to catch him and now that the shock of the gore covering the scene has worn off, she can't help thinking that maybe something has gone terribly wrong.

Taako makes the shallowest dip of his head. Oh thank God — she feels selfish for rush of the relief that washes over her, but she can’t help it. He _remembers_ her _._

"Hi, Lup," Taako says, voice even softer than hers.

"Hi, Taako," she says, and if she sounds like she's about to cry, that's because she is. She wants him out of this room. She wants him safely at home. "Can I come over there?"

"You'll get your boots all gruesome," he says, and he sounds _so much_ like her brother that tears do start welling up at the corners of her eyes.

"I don't care." He nods, another shallow dip of his head, and Lup practically sprints over so she can make sure he's physically alright, because she figures that his mind's a lost cause for the moment — he's covered in blood, he seems two seconds away from being catatonic — but at least she can make sure he's in no immediate danger of bleeding out. "Is any of this yours? Did he hurt you?"

"I hurt him," Taako says. "I'm tore his throat out. He had one of the Winter Soldier’s old kill switches. The one that paralyzes me." He says these things like they have no emotional weight. As if he's saying the sky is blue.

"You overrode it?" Kravitz says, looking up sharply from where he's inspecting the body at Taako’s feet.

Taako nods a third time, accompanied by a small shrug, as if to say _I don't know how._

"He wanted me to join him, be his pet assassin. I don't fucking know," Taako says. He glances back at Lup. She’s starting at him, desperate to take him all in, like maybe if she looks hard enough she'll be able to read his mind. She hopes that none of his ribs are broken.

"None of the blood is mine."

"Are you hurt at all?" Lup asks again. Taako shakes his head. She doesn’t know what to say to him. She’s been chasing him for months. She’s dreamed about this day, planned out what she says — that she cared about him, that he worried her when he left, that it didn’t matter what he did, who he acted like, as long as he was _safe_ and _around._ That she loved him. That he made her _so mad_. But all the words seem wrong now.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Lup asks instead. She wants to ask why he’s still here. She knows what happens in the chair. She’s read the reports — _the asset was wiped. The asset screamed. The asset complied._ She’s wanted to throw laptops across the room in anger and grief because of what the Hunger did to her brother.

"I can't," Taako says, and he sounds small and miserable. He sounds exactly like he did when they were six and he had the flu and she didn’t and he was too sick to come and play with her, and she demanded he come out anyway.

They both got in trouble, when he did, but Taako didn’t want her to be alone.

“Why not?” she asks, trying to keep her voice gentle. She’s not demanding anything of him. She just wants to _understand._

“I _can’t_ ” he says, even more agitated. “I, fuck —” She can see the rapid rise and fall of his chest. He’s starting to hyperventilate, his eyes darting from side to side. “Maintenance required, protocol must be observed, asset needs to be stored properly, proper maintenance requi — _fuck!_ ” He grasps her arm with his hand — the flesh one — without seeming to know what he’s doing. She doesn’t know what to do, and without thinking, she lets him clutch her, and uses her other hand to rub small circles on his back as he mumbles to himself. There’s blood all over her uniform now, too.

“Hey, Taako, it’s okay — it’ll be _okay_. What’s — you don’t have to move yet. We can wait for — it’s okay.” Lup can feel panic rising in her own throat. She doesn’t want to leave him in the chair, but she doesn’t want to send him spiraling into a panic attack either.

“Conditioning, probably,” Kravitz says quietly. Lup doesn’t jump, but it’s a close thing. She’d kind of forgotten he was there. “He’s not allowed to leave.”

“I will _carry him out_ if I have to,” Lup snarls — and hey, that’s not actually a bad idea.

“I can do it,” Kravitz says. “If he’s alright with that.”

Lup turns her head to look at Kravitz, surprise written across her face.

“I wouldn’t wish the procedure on my worst enemy,” Kravitz says, answering her unspoken question. “Here, give him to me. You smash the equipment — if that sounds okay with you, Taako?”

“Too bad you don’t have the hammer guy with you,” Taako mumbles, sagging against Lup like a dead weight. She wants to ask how much he knows about the Avengers — she doesn’t remember getting into too much detail about Magnus and his hammer before. She’s not sure Taako was _Taako_ before either. He’s so much more himself now, even if he is exhausted and bloody and looks like he hasn’t been eating enough. At least he’s not hyperventilating. “Okay. Yeah. Get me outta here. I don’t care anymore.”

That statement is concerning. Now is not the time to unpack it. Lup disentangles Taako from her arms and Kravitz steps forward, neatly scooping Taako into a bridal carry. She knows that Taako would usually be embarrassed about this, or at least _flirtatious_ — Taako being carried by a handsome guy would usually be prime Taako-being-really-gay-and-annoying time. Now, he just leans his head against Kravitz’s shoulder.

Lup raises her shield. “This might get messy,” she says. “And loud. Maybe get out of here, yeah?”

She waits for the door to close behind them, then slams the side of her shield into the chair. The terrific screech of it smashing through the metal chair is the most satisfying sound Lup’s heard in a long time.

#

“I can walk,” Taako says as soon as they cross the threshold and the door closes behind them.

“Alright,” Kravitz says, but he has his private doubts. He knows the cascade triggers that Taako referred to, the conditioning that kept him tied to the chair even after their effect wore off — knows the bone-deep, irrational fear that could be buried in your mind. He sets Taako down in an office chair instead of on his feet. Taako makes no move to get up.

Kravitz is working on autopilot, mostly. Fortunately his autopilot is better than most people’s manual. Most of his brain is preoccupied with memory. He watched the Winter Soldier get wiped once when he was much, much younger. It’s seared into his brain — another thing he probably should have told Lup about. It’s… shameful. He did nothing to try and stop it.

Kravitz refuses to feel guilty for that. At the time, he was no more able to question orders than an earthworm was able to fly. To intervene would have meant his punishment, or death, or maybe him being manhandled into the chair too, which would probably also have meant death with someone without Taako’s enhancements. Still. He feels a little better, having been useful here. Having helped Taako get out of the room.

Kravitz sits down in another office chair, next to Taako. “She was going crazy trying to find you,” he says. He studiously avoids staring at Taako, watching him out of the corner of his eye instead. He’s blood-splattered, and there are stray strands of hair falling out of his ponytail. Kravitz is struck by the irrational urge to fix it.

“Yeah,” Taako says. “I didn’t ask her to.”

“A good thing she did, though.”

“Yeah,” Taako says. His voice cracks. “ _Yeah._ ”

Kravitz looks down at his hands. They listen to Lup destroy the chair — the room — on the other side of the door in silence.

#

It takes half an hour. Lup comes out of the lab breathing heavily, her face flushed.

"No one," she says, hair plastered to her face with sweat as she kneels down next to Taako, her shield clanging against the tile. "No one, no one’s going to ever touch you again, okay? No ones putting you back in the _fucking_ tube. They'll have to go through me first, and — and I won't let them get you. Okay, Taako?" She says his name tentatively. She's maybe crying.

He looks up at her. "I want to go home," Taako says. She remembers him saying this once before. It was during the war — late at night, only the two of them on watch. He’d said it like a confession and looked immediately embarrassed. She’d squeezed his hand and said, “I want to go home too,” and that was the last they spoke of it, because they were Captain America and if they didn’t believe in their cause, who would?

Now he says it like someone lost. Like home is a strange concept to him, a place he doesn’t know — the remnant of desire without a direct object. She brushes the hair out of his face, tucking it behind his ear, and tries to wipe blood off his cheek, but it just smears.

He leans into her hand anyway. She wonders if it’s a conscious movement.

"Okay," Lup says. Her voice breaks a little. "Okay. We're going home."

“I’ll get the helijet,” Kravitz says, his voice as soft as Lup’s ever heard it. Lup hadn’t even thought of that — she and Kravitz left the jet a good four blocks away to preserve some of the element of surprise. Lup can’t just wheel Taako down the hall and directly into her bedroom. There’s _logistics_ to take care of.

They don't show these bits in the movies. The part where you're in a building owned by Nazis waiting for your best friend the super spy to fly a helijet your boyfriend’s company owns to the roof. Taako is getting blood all over a Hunger office chair. Lup is getting blood all over her hands.

Kravitz hasn’t made a single comment about the Winter Soldier being dangerous. He hasn’t murmured under his breath that she shouldn't be fooled by him, that he's going to turn on them at any moment. Lup's grateful, because she doesn't have the energy for an argument right now.

Kravitz touches her shoulder, squeezes it gently. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” he says. “Twenty, tops. I’ll call Barry too.”

"Thanks," Lup says. She knows that she should talk to Barry herself, but she can't imagine explaining everything over the phone. She knows he’s probably watching through the cameras not, but she wants to talk to him about this while burying her face in his shoulder as he rubs her back.

"Call me if you need anything before I’m back," Kravitz says, and she knows this is his tacit attempt at giving her some space. She dredges up an appreciative smile for him. He nods and squeezes her shoulder again as he walks away. Lup watches him go, then turns back to Taako.

His body language is all _Taako_ now, the way he's curled up in his chair could be Taako at twenty, fifteen, ten, five. It could be Taako after getting scolded for stealing, Taako in the bathroom after Jerry Darwin broke up with him, Taako the morning after their aunt died. It's the way he shrank when he was miserable, as if he could disappear into a corner of the universe and be forgotten. When he's happy, he's expansive, sprawling out in his words and limbs and actions. But he licks his wounds in private. Getting him to talk was always like pulling teeth — first painful and slow, then everything out all at once.

“How’re you doing?” Lup asks as she dabs at Taako’s forehead. He shrugs. He runs a hand through his hair and pulls at the dried blood coating his strands. He yanks harder. She hastily grabs his fingers and holds them in her own. He's going to pull out his own hair if he keeps that up.

"Stop.” He pauses, frowning. "Stop — fuckin' s-stop asking me _questions_ ," he says with a vicious stutter as if it's hard for him to spit out the words.

"Sure," Lup says, immediately. She's just happy he's talking to her. "Fuck, sorry. I wouldn't be in the mood for a conversation either."

"No, it's not — I'm just, shit's hard," he says, still stilted, but sounding more like himself. "I don't mind you talking. It's... yeah, you're good."

"Just no questions?" she says lightly.

"That was a question," Taako says. She grins at him, startled into laughter. He smiles back. It looks awful between his gaunt face, the blood still dappling it, his hair plastered to his neck. It's all unmistakably _Taako_ though.

"That was pretty lame," she says, and then tests the waters. "Just like you."

"F-fuck off," he says, and closes his eyes. "I'm tired. Leave me alone."

"Absolutely not," Lup says. She puts his hand back down, placing it carefully on the armrest. "You're my heart, remember? Can't go leavin' that around just wherever."

Taako doesn't say anything to that, and closes his eyes. He stays like that as she tries to separate the strands of his hair. Lup wonders if he's fallen asleep. He looks like he needs it. She wants to ask him a thousand questions — Why did he leave? What were his plans? Why didn't he tell her? — but all of that can wait. She's going to pour him in bed as soon as he takes a bath. He doesn't really look up to standing.

When she lifts her hand away, Taako opens his eyes.

"Hey," she says. "You back with us?"

He stares at her for a long moment, expression blank. It scares her a little. "Yeah," Taako says, finally, the blankness falling away. "Yeah, I think so."

#

Something in his head feels different, as if sitting in the chair reset him, as if he'd been wiped except instead of being _wiped_ something had been poured into him. It feels different to look at Lup, now. He can connect Captain America to his sister — to him, and it _feels_ different in a way that he’s unable to articulate. She's still his first priority, sure, but she's no longer his _handler_.

He can think of himself as Taako now, and it's a surprise, but it feels as natural as breathing. He's Taako. That's Lup. Of _course_.

He knew that before — that he was something derived from Taako, that he was going through the motions of being Taako, but the concept of _identity_ was like water slipping through his fingers.

Now he can think: _I'm Taako._ He can think: Lup is taking me to her apartment, and of _course_ she's taking me to her apartment, because she's my twin sister and she loves me. She wants me to come with her because I'm her brother and I _am_ her brother. The thought is _easy._

The ease scares him — being able to think of himself as more than an action-impulse-ghost without thinking it’s fake, without worrying that someone else's memories had been implanted in his brain. The uneasy desire to care for Lup, to kill the Hunger — before there’d been a barrier keeping him from _really_ feeling them, but there's something live in his brain now.

Lup keeps trying to wipe blood off his skin. She's getting it all over her hands. They're shaking a little — and that's a memory, isn't it? He was always the one with steady hands, stillness beaten into him with his sniper training. Lup sitting next to him, getting blood on her fingers as she patched up one of his wounds, a stray bullet to his thigh, a lucky shot, but he got the bastard back. And he had to spend the next six hours hiding in that fucking tree, and by the time he got down the wound had mostly healed but he was dizzy with blood loss and Lup had wiped the blood off with and bandaged him up with trembling hands because she was _one month_ into active combat and she still wasn't used to the thought that he could die and she wouldn't know about it until after it happened.

He remembers the way that felt, now, not just a clinical recollection, but the visceral sense memory of bark beneath his palms, of his feet sinking into the mud as he trudged back to camp, alone.

"Quit fussin' at me," Taako says now, just like he said then. "You're only smearing it around anyway."

"You're _covered in blood,_ " Lup says.

He can't argue with that. He _is_ covered in blood, the metallic scent of it heavy in his nose. It doesn't bother him — he smells like metal because of the arm anyway, but the blood is drying and tacky and very uncomfortable overall.

"Well," he says. "That's a me problem."

" _Taako,_ " Lup says, and in that word he gets a thousand inflections. Exasperation, worry, fondness. The way she said his name so many times before. He can put all those thoughts _together_ -together — so novel, so _normal_.

" _Lup,_ " he says back without thinking. The most organic thing. She smiles at him again, small and surprised, a direct contrast to her shaking hands. He hates that he's doing this to her. Taako shouldn't have stayed, he should have bolted the moment that Kravitz carried him out of the room. He could have run. It would have been difficult, but he should have _tried._ He's an extra complication in Lup's life. He's got more bases to hit, more Hunger agents to kill. A semblance of routine. Routine is good when everything about your existence gets fucked, right? He’s pretty sure he’s heard someone say that.

But now he knows that Lup would just keep following him. That if it wasn't here, she'd catch him somewhere else. Cap's like a bloodhound and she's got his scent. Lup _always_ has to get her way. He knew that intellectually before but now he’s _internalized_ it — he knows it like he knows that Lup is good. Before he had some hope that he could finish his self-imposed mission and disappear. Now that something in his brain’s been shaken loose, he knows that Lup _wouldn’t stop._

He's so tired, anyway. He knows it wasn’t that long, but it felt like he spent days sitting on the Chair, unable to get up and walk away. And before that, the crush of the handler's windpipe, the ride to the base in Jersey City, the poorly staged car accident in Jersey City. The base before that, the one before, and before, and before.

The adrenaline rush is wearing off. He can't even summon the strength to bat Lup's hand away. When was the last time he slept? He wants to sleep, but nothing about the situation says _safe_ , and suddenly misses Lup's quiet bedroom, her bed piled high with pillows. Why had he left? He left because he didn't think he was Taako. He left because his brain was a bucket of nuts and bolts, spilling everywhere. That's still true. But he wants to go home. He's not sure what he means by home.

"Kravitz is here," Lup says abruptly, putting a hand to her earpiece and standing. Taako freezes in surprise. Stupid of him not to notice the earpiece at all. He must be more tired than he realized. "You wanna ride over? I could push you."

He doesn't like the idea of being carted around like equipment. "I can walk."

"T, you look like you're gonna fall over," Lup says.

Taako scowls. Nothing is _physically wrong with him._ He’s _fine._

"I can walk!" he insists, and staggers out of the chair.

Lup hastily wraps an arm around his waist to steady him. "Sure you can," she says. "Hey. Go slow, okay?"

Taako doesn't answer, too preoccupied with the business of putting one foot in front of another without stumbling. Between the two of them, they manage to get up the stairs and onto the roof.

The helijet is branded with HALLWINTER INDUSTRIES. Kravitz is standing in the doorway and waves when he sees them. Lup waves back with her free arm.

"Barry's meeting us at the tower," Kravitz says, stepping to the side so they can get up the ramp and into the jet. “He cut his meeting short.”

Taako’s not really paying attention to logistics. He lets Lup help him into a seat, but being strapped in — that's no good. He lets it happen anyway, too tired to fight it, even though having to sit here, still, without anywhere to go, makes something in his brain go shrill with panic. His face must be doing something strange, because when Lup glances up at him from fastening the straps, she does a double take.

"T? What's wrong?" she asks, sitting beside him.

He shakes his head and hides his face in her shoulder again, gripping her wrist with his flesh hand, careful to keep his metal one far away from anything, clenched tightly into a fist.

"Okay," Lup says. "You're okay."

He's not, but it's nice of her to lie about it, it's reassuring, but too reminiscent of _this won't hurt a bit, Soldier,_ and now it's like he's strapped down back in the chair or maybe he's being strapped down on a table, and everything is starting to feel sort of distant and he's going to miss the feeling in his brain that he just started getting back — the solidness of it. He's not feeling great — he's feeling nothing at all. He’s weightless or, no, that's just the helijet taking off. There's someone talking in his ear but he can't process it anymore, and —

He loses some time.

Taako blinks, and between one blink and another, he's suddenly back. The last thing he really remembers is straps cutting across his chest, not being able to hear anything. He remembers waiting for the mouthguard to be inserted. He jerks forward in surprise, and there's a sharp pain at the back of his skull.

"Hey!" Lup says. "Chill! If I was pulling too hard you coulda just _said_."

He stops moving. He looks down. He's sitting in a bathtub filled with steaming water and bubbles halfway up his chest. The water is tinged a little pink where the caked blood is beginning to dissipate. There are suds on his shoulders. Everything smells like citrus. Lup's fingers scratch his scalp gently, detangling his hair.

"Why am I in a bathtub?" he asks dumbly.

"Well, you were covered in blood, and you looked like you were going to fall over, and when I called your name you didn't answer," Lup says, measured and matter-of-fact. Oh. He scared her. "I figured I could fix at least one of those things."

Taako draws his knees up to his chest. The hot water feels good against his skin. He can't remember the last time he took a bath. "You coulda just told me to take a shower. I coulda handled it."

"T, I had to unbuckle you and carry you outta the seat in helijet. You were pretty fuckin' unresponsive."

"Oh," Taako says. "Sorry." He doesn't want to talk about the way getting strapped in reminded him of being strapped into the Chair, not right now with all the heat leaching into his bones. The Winter Soldier was so seldom warm. Nobody poured the Winter Soldier into a tub with citrus bubble bath and washed the blood out of his hair.

"It's okay," Lup says, and her voice is kind. It's the same voice she used to call to stray cats in alleyways — fucking hell, can't believe he _remembers_ that. He sort of hates that she's using it on him. He feels like if she didn't, he'd just about lose it. "It's been kind of a fucked up day, huh?"

The laugh rips out of his chest like a sob, and he curls up tighter, wet face to wet knees.

"Kind of a fucked up _century._ "

#

It's a parallel of the first time Taako entered the tower, except for all the ways it isn't. Physically, he's in worse shape — that's obvious, even at a glance, especially when the blood's been washed off him. He almost falls asleep twice in the bathtub, and Lup has to shake his shoulder to keep him awake.

"Just a lil longer and you can go to bed, alright?" she says. She stands and unhooks the showerhead from the wall and hands it to him. "Rinse off, I'm going to grab you some pajamas."

"I want your Captain America hoodie," Taako says, taking the showerhead from her.

“Yeah,” Lup says. “Of course. You got it.”

Lup leaves the bathroom. She sits on the side of her bed. Thirty seconds, she thinks. Thirty seconds and she can deal with everything. Taako's back. He's safe in the tower, and everything else can be a later problem. He's acting more like himself now, and that's what's different from the first day — he's _asking_ for things. He's talking like he's _Taako_ and not a confused automaton, even if he's upset, at least he's _showing_ that he's upset. Who _wouldn't_ be upset after today? Christ. Kravitz had to carry him out of the Hunger lab. _This isn't even the first time Taako's had to be carried out of a Hunger lab._

Her phone rings. She startles and picks it up.

"Hey," Barry says. "Taako's gotten out of the bath, in case you wanted to go back in there with clothes or something."

Lup wrinkles her nose. "Babe, are you _watching_ us right now?"

"No," Barry says. "Maybe. Not really _watching_. I just have the security feed up right now, and I told Jarvis to let me know when you had a minute. How're you holding up? Do you want me to come down there?"

Aw. He's worried about her, the nerd. She wedges the phone between her ear and her shoulder and stands. "We're good, honey," she says. "I'm just gonna grab Taako something to wear and stick him in bed."

"How's he doing?"

Lup opens Taako’s drawer — the one she mentally designated for him and filled with clothes she thought he’d like the first time he came to the tower. Lots of purple, lots of clothes culled from her closet. She grabs the first pair of pajama pants she sees.

"He's, like, _this_ close to passing out," she says. "But he's not, like, _dissociating_ anymore. He kinda snapped outta it in the bathtub, and he's upset but he's _Taako_ upset, you know?"

She wriggles a t-shirt out of the drawer, along with underwear and fuzzy socks.

"I don't know," Barry says, "but if you think that's good."

"Yeah," she says. "He's... he's acting like _himself_. He wants my Captain America hoodie."

"Good?"

"Yeah," Lup says. "It's... yeah." She doesn't know how to explain the way there's an _awareness_ Taako’s showing, even though he's the sort of quiet he gets when he's _really_ exhausted. That's familiar to her, same way as she's sure her moods are familiar to him after too long living together.

God, she's missed him.

She closes the drawer and picks up the Captain America hoodie from where its hung in her closet. "Gonna hang up on you now. I'll be down later?"

"Sure, honey," Barry says. "Let me know if you need me, alright? Seriously."

"We're _good_ , babe," Lup says, and it's all fondness. "Love you."

She hangs up and shoves the phone back in her pocket, before gathering up the clothes and returning to the bathroom. She knocks on the door and cracks it open. "Clothing delivery."

Taako sticks a hand out. She gives him the pajamas and hoodie. The door closes. "What, no thank you?"

"Thank you!" muffled through the door.

"You're welcome!"

She hovers outside the bathroom door. Taako fell asleep in the bathtub while she was washing his hair. No way is Lup leaving again until Taako is safely in bed. She checks her phone again. A message from Kravitz about the data picked up from the Hunger base. Barry sending her a gif of a cute cat. Aw. The sound of the hairdryer makes Lup glance at the doorway.

"D'you need help with your hair?" she calls.

"No," Taako calls back, and this could be any night back in Brooklyn, back in 1940, except for the fact that they're in a multimillion dollar penthouse and seventy years in the future and one of them was frozen for decades and the other was brainwashed and used as a weapon. If she closes her eyes she can pretend that this is Taako getting ready to go out, blowdrying his hair with the hairdryer they stole from Macy’s while Taako flirted with the sales clerk. But the past is the past. She opens her eyes again, just in time to watch Taako open the door. His hair is clean, he’s bundled into pajamas, he looks an entire world away from a few hours ago.

"I used your lotion," he announces. "The fancy shit in the glass jar."

"Great," Lup says. "S'not like you weren't using it every day last time you was here."

"But now I _appreciate_ it," Taako says, and his airy words are in direct contrast to the way he slumps his head against her shoulder as if putting on clothes, drying his hair, and dabbing lotion on his face was some sort of phenomenal effort. At least he looks more comfortable now, soft and wrapped in her hoodie.

"Go to sleep, dingus," Lup says, and it feels okay to insult him a little now, poke some fun, they never spoke _nicely_ to each other unless shit had really hit the fan, and it's been hitting the fan for months, it feels like. Years, maybe.

"You're not the boss of me, goofus," Taako mumbles, and she has to keep a wide smile from stretching across her face. She puts her arm around his waist.

Taako lets her direct him over to the bed, turning down the duvet and depositing him in between the sheets. He grabs one of the pillows and smashes his face into it. Lup gives him a another and he clutches it to his chest. He looks supremely comfortable.

He turns his head for a moment, looks up at her through nearly closed eyes. "You'll be here when I get up?" he practically slurs, two seconds from being completely conked out.

"Yeah," Lup says, and she hates that he feels like he has to ask.

"Cool," Taako says, and turns his face back into the pillow, curling up neatly. "Y'should sleep, too."

#

Barry’s watching the security feed from Lup’s room, feeling happy to have her home and safe — and glad she’s got Taako now. He doesn’t hear Kravitz walk into the lab and JARVIS doesn’t _warn_ him, which means Barry’s gonna have to have a talk with his AI.

“Are you watching your girlfriend and her brother _sleep_?” Kravitz asks. “You have cameras in Lup’s _bedroom_?”

Barry nearly jumps out of his skin, banging his knee against his desk as he whirls his chair around to face Kravitz. “Jesus Christ, Krav, make some _noise_ when you walk.”

Kravitz has showered and changed into clean clothes. His eyes are fixed on the projection floating over Barry’s worktop. “You’ve got an AI. JARVIS would have told you if I was a threat,” he says. “You know this is an invasion of privacy, right?”

“You’re watching it too,” Barry says, feeling defensive.

“Only because you have it _up_ ,” says Kravitz. “I came here looking for you, not this. How many secret cameras do you have around the tower? How many are operational?”

Barry closes out of the feed. “I wanted to check in, but I didn’t want to wake them. They both need sleep. So do you.”

“I’m fine,” Kravitz says. It’s definitely a lie, even if everything about Kravitz’s body language is projecting someone alert and ready to face the world. _Barry’s_ tired and all he did was stay on the phone with the two of them while they rushed a Hunger base.

“You’re exhausted.” Barry eyes Kravitz. “Are you still worried about Taako being an agent of the Hunger? He’s been taking out Hunger bases for _months_ , Krav. He’s not working for the Hunger.”

Kravitz shakes his head. “I’m not worried about him being a spy. I’m worried about him leaving again. He was strapped to the chair when we found him, Barry. He’s got plenty of reason to bolt. I’m sure his head’s a mess. Lup and I might have seemed like a good option when he was covered in his handler’s blood and unable to move, but he’s clean and safe now. What’s to stop him from bolting once he’s rested?”

“Lup,” Barry says. “Lup’s certain it’s really Taako in there this time. She’s so _relieved_ , Krav. She’s happy, and I don’t know what Taako’s really like, but he seemed more alert. He asked for things Lup didn’t offer him. He wasn’t doing that before.”

Kravitz is quiet for a moment, then his looks at Barry, smirking. “You’re worried too. That’s why you had the feed from Lup’s room up. You want to make sure he wants to stay as badly as she wants him to.”

“I just wanted to _check_ on her, okay?” Kravitz isn’t wrong though. Barry is worried. Lup cares about her brother _a lot_. She travelled up and down the coast following him. And Barry and Kravitz followed her, because that’s what they do. Because they love her.

Barry pushes his glasses up so he can rub his eyes. He’s _tired_ and he’d love to sleep, but he knows he won’t be able to. “Wanna order a pizza?” he asks, looking up at Kravitz. “I’ll put the security cam on in one screen and pull up a movie on another to make it less weird.”

Kravitz raises an eyebrow, all imperious and judgey for a moment, then drops the act and pulls up a stool. “Yeah, okay,” he agrees, suddenly more relaxed, letting some of his exhaustion shine through in the slump of his shoulders. “ _Please_ don’t order pineapple on the pizza, Barry.”

“I’m gonna order pineapple on the pizza, bud.” Barry grins and pats Kravitz’s knee. “Don’t worry, I’m a billionaire. I can afford two pizzas.”

Bickering about pizza toppings is a nice, normal thing to do. Barry orders plain pepperoni for Kravitz and Hawaiian for himself. It always surprises him when Kravitz like basic things. Being a spy feels like it should automatically mean you have a preference for fancy food. Maybe he’s seen too many Bond films. His dad had been fond of them.

“You wanna watch some James Bond?” Barry asks, glancing at Kravitz. “We could go classic. Something campy. Have you seen the one where they go to the moon?”

Kravitz gives Barry a confused look. “The _moon_?”

“Oh yeah, fuck. We’re watching Moonraker,” Barry says, and a second, larger screen pops up beside the feed from Lup’s bedroom. “It’s one of my favourites. I watched it all the time when I was a kid. It’s a Roger Moore era film and it’s — I mean it’s, uh, _bad_ , but that’s why it’s good.”

“James Bond is _nothing_ like being a real spy,” Kravitz says, but settles in as the movie starts.

“What, you never had a sexy spy affair?” Barry glances at Kravitz, grinning. “No hotel trysts with agents on the other side of things?”

Kravitz snorts. “I don’t think you understand how conditioned patriotism works. Why would I have an affair with the enemy? I was loyal to my country until I wasn’t.”

That’s fair, but also Barry’s maybe been spending too much time with a spy as a friend. “But you _did_ have a sexy spy affair,” he says. “Just with someone on your own side. That sounds less sexy than the enemies thing, honestly.”

Kravitz looks surprised — briefly, momentarily — and then he looks blank as he takes careful control of his facial expressions. Teasing Kravitz is fun. Barry likes knowing that Kravitz lets his guard down with him and Lup. He has a feeling they’re on a _very_ short list of people Kravitz is willing to do that around.

It means Barry’s _got_ to give him shit about this.

“You _did_.” Kravitz is pointedly not looking at him, his eyes focused over Barry’s shoulder, on the security feed from Lup’s room, instead. Barry’s definitely onto something here. He grins, reaching over and prodding Kravitz’s leg. “Come on, bud. I’m an engineer. I don’t get sexy spy trysts. Tell me _something_.”

“You’re a billionaire superhero who’s dating Captain America,” Kravitz says, glancing at him and raising an eyebrow. “You’re doing just fine.”

Barry laughs. “Please? I’ll leave you alone after, but you have _no_ idea how curious I am now. This is Bond shit.”

“It wasn’t Bond shit,” Kravitz says, voice firm. “It was — we were on a mission together. We’d been very successful. It was adrenaline. Attraction.” He pauses. “It _was_ at a fancy hotel, if that’ll sate your curiosity. It was… good.”

There’s something about the careful way Kravitz is talking about it that makes Barry feel like maybe he shouldn’t be teasing him about this. Kravitz hasn’t ever talked about his lovelife before. Barry’s seen him flirt with plenty of people — Kravitz is extremely good looking and a spy, of course he uses his looks to his advantage — but _actual_ dating? Barry’s not even completely sure how Kravitz identifies.

“You really liked them, huh?” he says, after a moment. “The, uh, spy person. Your partner.”

Kravitz shrugs, right back to looking at the screens instead of Barry. “It was a long time ago,” he says, which isn’t an answer. Or it _is_ , but not a direct one. “People change.”

Whoever it was is probably on the other side of things, working against Kravitz now. Barry can’t imagine. There’s fighting with an ex and then there’s fighting _against_ an ex, and Kravitz has drawn some pretty clear lines about where his loyalties lie. And maybe that’s the nicer scenario. Spies don’t have a long life expectancy, generally.

“I’m sorry, bud.” Barry says. “Didn’t mean to dredge up bad memories.”

Kravitz shakes his head. “They’re not bad. They’re just — from before I met RQ and she brought me in. They’re… complicated.”

“If you ever wanna talk about it, I’ll listen,” Barry says, and then gets to his feet because the pizza’s gonna arrive downstairs soon and he gets the vibe that _now_ isn’t when Kravitz wants to talk about it. That maybe he never will. He reaches out and pats Kravitz’s shoulder. “I’m gonna get us both a drink and then you can tell me everything wrong with the spy shit in Moonraker. It’ll be fun. Like a sleepover.”

“A sleepover where we watch your girlfriend and her brother sleeping,” Kravitz says, because he’s an asshole.

“Yep,” says Barry, unrepentant. “But you wanna do that too so you can’t shame me anymore.”

#

Awareness returns to Taako in stages. First, the knowledge of the space around him — soft sheets, pillows, blankets, someone warm beside him. He feels vaguely like maybe none of this should be alright, there's the niggling doubt that a body next to him shouldn’t mean safety, that as soon as he realized that there was someone else there, he should have snapped awake.

But his eyes are still closed, his mind still hovering in the comfortable half-conscious fog between sleep and waking. He moves closer to the warmth without thinking. It's nice. This is nice. Everything is soft and warm and very _present,_ like the past and the future are far away. He doesn't want to get up. He feels like if he let it, sleep would tug him under again. The duvet is a heavy weight across his body and it’s comforting, for once, to be enveloped by something like this. It smells like cotton, fresh laundry, the lotion that sits on Lup's nightstand.

Oh. The person next to him must be Lup. Of _course_ it’s Lup. He cracks open an eyelid. There’s Lup. She's curled up under the covers, head mashed into a pillow so he can only see a sliver of her face and the tumble of her hair. She's snoring a little. Other than that, the room is quiet. His _head_ is quiet. For a moment, it all seems utterly pedestrian. It’s like the countless mornings when he woke up first, next to her. Sharing a bed as kids because they were small, sharing a bed as teens because they were broke and only had one mattress. Sharing a bed during the war because they were scared.

Then he remembers. The awful last day. Returning to the tower. Lup said she would be there when he woke up. Without his consent, his brain dredges a memories of the days Taako didn’t remember himself, the last time he was here, waking without anyone around. The clouded fear he felt every morning, which he still can’t explain. Taako is suddenly, irrationally afraid that he's dreaming Lup up, that his swiss cheese brain is giving him a false image of exactly what he wants. His eyes snap wide open. He'll leave if she's a hallucination, he thinks, suddenly frantic. He'll leave — he won't be able to stand it if she's not there.

Taako stares at Lup's softly breathing form. If she's real, he probably shouldn't wake her. She's got to be tired. But he has to know.

He pokes her in the ribs with a cautious finger. She makes a soft sound of protest. He pokes her again, harder, and she makes a louder exclamation and wriggles away, kicking him without any real force. "M' sleeping, Taako," Lup mumbles. "G'back to sleep."

"Mm," Taako says, and closes his eyes again, satisfied, heartbeat calming. Lup is there, real and solid and close. She told him to sleep. He doesn't have to listen, but he thinks he will. He's still very tired, he thinks abstractly. He's so _fucking_ tired.

He'll deal with everything else later. Lup is next to him. He feels safe. He sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gang, we've reached... the halfway point of the fic! This is a _long boy_ , but we're getting into out end game now and we're _very excited_. Please leave a comment and kudos if you enjoyed reading!  <3
> 
> A scheduling note: Iz has Law and Allison is dying of work overload, so after eight months of consistency, we're gonna take a brief break from our regular every-other-week posting schedule and see you for the next chapter on April 25th. We hope this update being a Long one will help tide you over.
> 
> Please come and say hello on tumblr, where we're [anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousAlchemist.tumblr.com) and [marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)!


	19. The Mind-Body Connection

Taako is back. Lup stares at him, asleep in bed beside her, and tries to figure out how she’s feeling. Hopeful. Happy. Scared.

Taako’s been back before and he _left_. Taako’s been through hell — a fact she understands better now, having poured over the Winter Soldier files — and he’s not the same person who fell from the train seventy years ago. He’s _Taako_ , undeniably, and more himself now than he was the last time he came to the tower, but he’s going to be different. He’s been through _so much shit_.

Lup needs to figure out how to deal with that. Taako’s had way too many people trying to control him. She refuses to be added to that list. Taako’s going to decide for himself who he is not and she’s not gonna try and make him be the person she remembers. She’s just gotta make sure Taako knows she loves him no matter what.

She should probably also stop watching him sleep. It’s creepy.

Taako doesn’t seem like he’s going to get up anytime soon so she slides out of bed, grabbing her phone from her nightstand and walking out into the living room. She’s got a couple texts from Barry — one telling her he and Kravitz ordered pizza and a follow up saying he had pizza regrets because for a genius Barry sure played fast and loose with the whole lactose intolerant thing — and another from a number she doesn’t recognize. _Keep WS secure. Will call. L._

Lucretia knows Taako’s home. Great.

Lup clears her notifications so she doesn’t have to think about Lucretia’s incoming phone call. She _likes_ Lucretia, always respected her as a leader, but _boy_ has she got another thing coming if she thinks she’s gonna take Taako. Lup chased her idiot brother up and down the eastern seaboard and now that Taako’s in, he’s _staying_.

As long as that’s what Taako wants. It might not be. This might be a brief reprieve before Taako runs off on another murder tour.

She’s not sure she could take him leaving again.

“Lup?”

Lup jumps, hearing Taako’s voice from the bedroom. Maybe he wasn’t sleeping as soundly as she thought — maybe her leaving woke him. She very deliberately puts her phone face down on the counter. “Yeah, babe?” she calls back.

Taako appears in the doorway, wrapped in her comforter, hair a mess around his head. He doesn’t look like he wants to be up. “S’early,” he says. “Why are we awake?”

Lup’s used to getting up to work out first thing. It’s _eight_. By her usual standards, this isn’t early at all. “I was thinking about breakfast,” she says. It’s not a _total_ lie — she is hungry. “You wanna eat?”

“Oh fuck, food,” says Taako, which is probably a yes. He walks over to the table and takes a seat, still wearing the comforter. “What’ve you got?”

Lup doesn’t have a lot, honestly. Cooking wasn’t a high priority when they were looking for Taako. She’s got some leftover Chinese, some meal replacement shakes to keep her calories up, and, in her freezer, Tokyo Bananas. “Do you remember Twinkies?” she asks. “Like, the _good_ ones.”

“Oh fuck,” says Taako, sitting up straighter. “Are you gonna give me more weird Japanese Twinkies? _Hell_ yes.”

And that answers the half-formed question Lup had in the back of her mind about how clearly Taako remembered the first time he was here. If he remembers Tokyo Bananas, he probably remembers more or less everything else. It’s both good and bad. He had a lot of panic attacks, but he’ll know Lup’s apartment and recognize Barry.

He knows how to leave again, if he decides to leave.

Lup shoves that thought firmly away. “I’ve still got some in the freezer,” she says, walking over to the freezer and pulling out one of the boxes Barry left with her. “We can live decadently — cake for breakfast. Or… whatever you want, Taako. We just might have to order it.”

She turns back to Taako, setting the box of twelve snack cakes down on the kitchen table and sliding it towards him. “Go wild.”

Taako opens up the box and pulls out a cake. “You’re dating a _billionaire_ ,” he says. “You live in a skyscraper. You live decadently every day of your life.”

Lup laughs because Taako’s got a good point — she kind of does. “Yeah, fair. It’s a step up from a tenement apartment in Brooklyn, huh?”

“Your bathroom has _heated floors_ ,” Taako says, and then stuffs the small cake into his mouth.

Lup watches Taako reach for a second Tokyo Banana. She doesn’t want to push him, but the question is just _hanging_ there, waiting to be asked. “So… you remember? Brooklyn?”

Taako pauses, pulling his hand back and into his portable cocoon. “I mean… I don’t know. Kind of?” He looks down at the empty wrapper on the table, like it’s suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. “It’s just, uh, just kind of a hot fuckin’ mess in here, Lup. Like… imagine if someone opened up your skull, whisked your brains, and then sealed it all back up. It’s like that.”

Lup _can’t_ imagine. She can’t even begin to wrap her mind around someone coming in, taking away her memories, and shaping her into someone new. And she can’t imagine what getting her memories back after all that would be like either. “You don’t need to remember everything,” she says. “Even if you never remembered anything, I wouldn’t have cared. You’re still my brother. We’re a team, right? We stick together.”

“I probably would have _murdered_ you if I didn’t remember anything,” Taako says, but he looks up at her, smiling. “It’s all coming back to me — you’ve got a fuckin’ _death wish_.”

Lup laughs, kicking at where she thinks Taako’s leg is, under the layers of blanket he’s wrapped up in. “Oh good, you _do_ have your memories back.”

“Maybe,” says Taako, after a beat. “Some of them. I kind of… Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve been getting shit in stages, I guess. I remember… I remember being small. Learning to cook with… our aunt?” He squints at her until she nods, trying not to give away how much the uncertainty in his voice hurts.

Taako mirrors her nod. “Our aunt. And, uh, we worked shit jobs. Made a lot of onion soup. _God_ , we were fuckin’ poor. And… the war. I remember a lot of that. Fighting.” He scowls. “I got _shot_ in a _tree_. Killed the guy who did it, but cha’boy is _better_ than that.”

Lup remembers that night. She remembers her hands shaking as she treated Taako’s wound. She remembers how much _blood_ there was. “Kind of wish you didn’t remember that one.”

“No.” Taako’s voice is firm, suddenly — uncertainty gone. “No, it’s not a bad memory. _Embarrassing,_ maybe, but not bad. I made it back to camp. You helped me. Everything worked out fine.”

Lup watches Taako dart a hand out of his cocoon to grab another cake, feeling unbearably sad. There’s so much unspoken in Taako calling getting _shot_ in the middle of the war a good memory. So much pain and suffering he went through after that, when she wasn’t there to take care of him after. He hadn’t lost his arm yet. He wasn’t the Winter Soldier. In the grand arc of Taako’s life, all things considered, almost dying in enemy territory while still wholly himself probably _is_ nice.

Lup’s gonna find whatever reminds of the Hunger and shut it down for good.

Taako turns the cake over in his hands, then looks up at her. “Hey, can I order a croissant?”

Taako’s been through unimaginable hell, been brainwashed multiple times, but he’s home and he’s _asking_ for things this time. Specific things. Things Lup can make sure he gets. “Babe,” she says, “you can order _so many_ fuckin’ croissants.”

#

Kravitz is at loose ends. He and Lup accomplished their mission. Taako is back. He even seems like maybe he’s going to stay this time. Even the way he carries himself is different, less precise. He is not the man Kravitz remembers anymore — not the Winter Soldier.

Kravitz isn’t sure there’s much point to _him_ staying in New York now. Lup and Barry are going to be focused — rightly so — on helping Taako acclimate to not being a brainwashed assassin. Kravitz should stay in the tower for a few days so they know he’s not avoiding them, but what’s he going to do? He’s an assassin and a spy. There’s nothing for him here.

Kravitz sits down on his couch and calls RQ and Istus because he said he would. Plus, if he’s going to go somewhere else, it’ll probably be their apartment. His face is still all over the news after the Senate Hearings. It’s not like he can just disappear into the background anymore. He needs a place to stay with someone to watch his back and right now there’s no one he trusts to do that more than RQ.

Istus picks up the phone on the second ring. “Kravitz,” she says. “I’ve been waiting for your call. Did you find what you were looking for?”

Kravitz laughs, letting his head fall back against the couch and looking up at the eggshell white ceiling. His apartment in Hallwinter Tower was decorated by a designer Barry hired a week after they fought off an alien invasion together. It’s not to Kravitz’s tastes at all — too sterile, too modern, too _gray_ — but the couch is buttery soft leather and probably worth a small fortune so he’s very fond of it. Especially after warming it up with knit blankets from Istus. “You sound more like a spy than RQ.”

“Do I?” Istus asks, amused. “Should I ask if this is a secure line?”

“Please, what do you take me for?” asks Kravitz, mock-offended, mostly to hear Istus laugh. “Yes, we found him. He’s here now. I think he’s going to stay this time.”

“That’s — oh, Raven’s here. I’m going to put you on speaker, hold on.”

Kravitz waits while Istus plays with the phone, and then RQ’s on the line too. “You found the Soldier?”

“We found Taako.” Taako is the Winter Soldier and intellectually Kravitz knows that the Winter Soldier was Taako, but it’s not quite the same thing. The Soldier was a weapon. Taako is a man. “Lup’s happy.”

“ _I’m_ happy,” RQ says. “Now the three of you can stop chasing him. I don’t want to say you’ve been using him to avoid dealing with some of the shit you’ve got coming up, but —”

“But I’ve been using chasing Taako to avoid dealing with some of the shit I’ve got coming up.” Kravitz rubs a hand over his face. He’s unemployed and burned as a spy. Everyone knows who he is. He’s got no fuckin’ clue what he’s supposed to do with himself now. “Is there anything Lucretia needs my help with?”

“Kid, you’ve got the Winter Soldier living with you now. She’ll be in touch soon, I’m sure,” RQ says. “That’s not dealing with your shit.”

“I can’t _do_ anything about my shit,” Kravitz says. “My shit is that someone might decide I should be arrested for committing treason or espionage and also I’m unemployed.”

“You’re a superhero,” Istus says. “That’s not unemployed.”

“It doesn’t exactly _pay_ , though.” Kravitz likes being an Avenger, but his bread-and-butter was working for SHIELD. SHIELD, the intelligence agency he helped burn to the ground.

“You could always be Barry’s personal assistant again,” RQ says. “You were pretty good at that.”

“Bodyguard,” Istus suggests.

RQ snorts. “Does Iron Man need a bodyguard? He could —”

“ _Stop_.” Kravitz is smiling, despite himself. He’s glad he called. “I point out I’ve lost my job and this is your reaction.”

“You’re being dramatic and Russian about this,” RQ says. “You’re going to land on your feet, Kravitz. I don’t think you have to worry about wanting for work. Trust me — Lucretia’s not going down without a fight. She’s just been giving the three of you breathing room.”

“She called and tried to give us shit for harbouring the Winter Soldier,” Kravitz says, amused. RQ was away — Lucretia must not have omitted that from the version of the story she passed on.

“He _did_ shoot her.”

“He shot me too!” Kravitz barely restrains himself adding _twice_ , reaching down to rub absently at the scar on his stomach. It aches with phantom pains sometimes when he thinks about it too much. “You’re right,” he says. “I’m sure she’s got something for me to do.”

“And you’ve still for Lup and her brother to help,” Istus says. “You’re going to be plenty busy, Kravitz.”

“Sounds ominous,” Kravitz says, tone wry. “Like that thing people say — may you live in interesting times.”

“Well,” says Istus, “when has your life ever been dull?”

#

Taako falls asleep on the couch, full of croissants and snack cakes. Lup’s half-dozing beside him when she feels her phone vibrate in her pocket. She wiggles her phone out of her pocket to check her messages, assuming it’s Barry texting to ask how she’s doing, and freezes when she sees what the message _actually_ is — a text from Kravitz, no nonsense and to the point: _Lucretia calling BH. Lab._

Fuck. Lup probably should have texted Lucretia back. She doesn’t know how Lucretia even found out they brought Taako home — maybe Kravitz told? He’s the one who’s most paranoid about Taako killing her in the middle of the night, except Lup feels uncharitable thinking Kravitz tattled on her. Kravitz went on live television to take the blame for her decision making. He laid out his entire life to the _world_ when he uploaded the Hunger’s files to the internet. Kravitz was even good about bringing Taako in, like maybe seeing Taako in the chair finally knocked some sense into him.

Lup tugs the comforter Taako’s wearing like a cape more tightly around him and then slips out of the apartment, texting Kravitz back as she walks down the hall, towards the stairs and Barry’s lab: _Coming now._

There’s part of her that’s afraid of leaving Taako alone — afraid he’s going to disappear while she’s out of the room, like he did last time — but it’s different now. She can tell he’s _Taako_. He’s even supplying his own memories.

Plus, he’s exhausted. Definitely too tired to make a break for it. If she needs to deal with Lucretia calling to lecture them about the Winter Soldier thing, now’s as good a time as any.

Better, probably, than later, when Taako will be awake enough to talk to Lucretia himself.

The door to the lab is open and she can hear Kravitz’s voice as she approaches, explaining how they found Taako in his bland, emotionless Reaper voice. “— covered in blood, but coherent. He agreed to come back with us and has been cooperative at every stage in the process.”

Lup steps inside, pulling the door shut behind her, just in case Taako _does_ wake up. “He wanted to come home with me,” she says. JARVIS has a projection of Lucretia, sitting in a nondescript office, up in front of Barry and Kravitz. Kravitz stands at attention in front of the image. Barry’s sitting on a rolling metal shop stool. The office Lucretia’s in has no windows, nothing to give away her location. She could be anywhere in the world.

“Did Krav tell you Taako was in distress?” Lup asks. “Because he was _real_ fuckin’ distressed. We brought him in and I helped him wash the blood of the Hunger agent he killed off and then put him to bed. Today he woke up, ate a bunch of carbs, and went back to sleep. He’s not a danger to anyone.”

“Lup,” says Lucretia. “It’s good to see you.”

Lup wraps her arms around Barry from behind, leaning against him. “Lucretia, Taako’s not a threat. He’s home and he’s safe. He took out some Hunger bases. He did us a _favor_. Just let him rest.”

Lucretia studies the three of them for a long moment, then sighs. “The world hasn’t stopped while you chased your brother, Lup,” she says. “The Hunger isn’t our only enemy. In the absence of SHIELD, and with the Avengers distracted, there’s been a surge of activity. People and organizations trying to fill the void left by the Hunger. I appreciate the lengths you went to to find your brother, but the world still needs Captain America.”

Lup’s been back for less than twenty-four hours. Lup’s been fighting a war since the forties. Everytime one enemy goes down, another rises up to take its place. An endless cycle of fighting with no end in sight. “Right now Taako needs _Lup_ ,” she says. “That’s _my_ priority, not…” She trails off, glancing down at Barry for help.

“Evil robots,” he says.

“Evil robots.” Lup nods, turning back to Lucretia. “Besides, that’s kind of more _Barry’s_ thing than mine, isn’t it? He’s the nerd.”

Lucretia looks like she wants to disagree, but Kravitz steps in before she can say anything else about how important Captain America is. “Lup’s right,” he says. “Barry and I will handle things. She’s taking a sabbatical.”

“Agent Kravitz —”

“ _Am_ I an agent?” Kravitz asks, cutting Lucretia off. “SHIELD doesn’t technically exist anymore. I’m burned as a spy. I don’t think I’m an agent of anything. I _am_ , however, still entirely willing to accept work from you, Director, because I respect you and your integrity. Please respect Lup when she says Captain America is off duty.”

“I’ll help with the robot thing also,” Barry says. “Lup’s right — I am a nerd.”

Lucretia reaches up and pinches the bridge of her nose. “There’s no point in trying to reason with any of you on this, is there?”

“None,” says Lup, grinning. “Look, if the world is ending I’m not gonna sit at home, but I _can’t_ be on call the same way anymore. I don’t work for you either and Taako needs me. Sorry, babe.”

“All right,” says Lucretia, dropping her hand. “Kravitz, Barry, you can expect me to be in touch shortly. Lup, I hope your brother’s recovery goes... more smoothly this time.”

Lucretia ends the call and Barry relaxes, leaning back against Lup’s stomach. “Thank god you came fast,” he says. “I wasn’t sure I was gonna be able to stop her from calling your phone directly if you couldn’t make it up.”

“Taako was asleep,” Lup says. “He passed out after we ate a bunch of croissants.” Lucretia talking about Taako’s _recovery_ twigged something in Lup’s brain though. Taako’s been through a lot. The chair she destroyed was designed to shock him with electricity until his brain short-circuited and reset his memories. He’s gone through years of conditioning and _torture_ and maybe Lup shouldn’t just be feeding him pastries and letting him sleep.

She wants what’s best for Taako. She has no idea what that is. “Hey… should we, like, take Taako to see a doctor? He’s been through… a lot. That chair…”

“He’s got healing factor,” Kravitz points out. “Like you do. He’ll probably be fine if you give him enough time.”

“Yeah, maybe _technically_ , but Krav, he’s my brother and a person. When someone’s sick you take them to get medical help.” Lup glances between Kravitz and Barry. “Right?”

“I’ve seen you jump out of _multiple_ planes without a parachute,” Kravitz says. “You’re always fine. Plus, think about it, Lup. Your brother’s been the victim of a lot of experimentation. Do you think he’ll _want_ to see a doctor?”

Kravitz has a good point. Even _before_ all this, when they were kids, Taako hated doctors. He’s gonna be even worse now.

“What about Merle?” Barry asks, after a beat. “We were planning on calling him last time Taako was here. Maybe we just do that _now_ instead of putting it off until Taako has another panic attack. Merle’s the closest thing we have to a doctor we trust.”

“Yes, let’s do it now,” Lup says, leaning down to give Barry a quick kiss. “Merle’s so weird Taako won’t think of him like a doctor. Merle does _magic_. Taako’s gonna love him. Have you got his number?”

Barry nods. “JARVIS?”

“Calling Dr. Highchurch now, sir,” says JARVIS, and then the air fills with the sound of a phone ringing.

And ringing.

And ringing.

Merle may be Sorcerer Supreme, but apparently he doesn’t have voicemail.

“Shit,” says Barry. “Maybe try again later? We could —”

“Hello?” The voice on the other end of the line is distinctly _not_ Merle’s. It sounds like a teenage girl. “Hello, this is Merle Highchurch’s phone?”

“Uh.” Barry glances at Lup and Kravitz, eyes wide. “This is… Barry Hallwinter. Who am I speaking to?”

“I’m Mavis,” says the girl. “You’re Iron Man.”

“Yes,” says Barry. “Is your… is Merle around?”

“He’s my stepdad.” Mavis doesn’t sound overly impressed to be talking to Iron Man. Maybe it’s a teenager thing. “No, he’s in another dimension right now. He left me babysitting Mookie. Do you want me to tell him to call you back?”

Barry hesitates. Lup doesn’t blame him. She can _see_ him trying to come to terms with the concept of Merle casually being in _another dimension_ the same way she is. “I, uh, yeah,” Barry says. “That would be great. Thank you, Mavis.”

“Sure,” says Mavis, and then she hangs up on them.

The room is quiet, in the wake of the phone call.

“She _said that_ , right?” Barry asks, breaking the silence. He looks as confused as Lup feels. Even _Kravitz_ looks thrown. “She definitely said he was in another dimension? Is that — that’s not a thing, is it? Is it a _magic_ thing?”

Every time Lup thinks she’s getting used to the future, something pops up and proves her wrong.

#

“Are you sure it’s a good idea for me to come down without you warning Taako first?” Barry asks as he follows Lup down the hall. Kravitz excused himself, after their confrontation with Lucretia and the _weird_ revelation about Merle being out of this dimension for a while. Barry gets the feeling Kravitz is trying to give Lup space away from his paranoia about Taako’s intentions. “The last time he saw me, I gave him Hunger flashbacks.”

“He _asked_ you to work on his arm,” Lup says, shaking her head. “Babe, it’s gonna be fine. If anything you’ll reassure him. He tried to choke you out and you’re still standing.”

“Sure,” says Barry. He’s trying not to think about how Taako tore out a guy’s throat yesterday. “Very reassuring. Didn’t kill me.”

Lup stops walking and reaches out to grab his hand, lacing their fingers together. “It’s okay if you’re worried. Or if you’re not ready for it with… you know, your mom and dad. You don’t have to come meet him again today. I just… thought maybe you’d be up for it?”

The hopeful look on Lup’s face is too much for Barry to resist. If she thinks Taako will be okay, he trusts her. He trusts her, and he knows Taako’s not the one who’s responsible for his parents’ deaths. “I’m up for it if he is.”

“He’s fine,” Lup says, like she wasn’t washing blood out of Taako’s hair last night. “Come on. You’re going to love him.”

Barry’s heard stories about Captain America and her brother his whole life — from his father, from Davenport, from his teachers, from popular media. When he was sixteen and too young to hang out with anyone else at MIT, he’d illegally downloaded a fan-subbed version of the limited run, critically acclaimed Captain America _anime_ and watched it alone in his dorm.

None of those stories held a candle to the real thing. He suspects the same is true for Taako. At least, he suspects it’ll be true now that Taako’s broken out of some of the conditioning the Hunger inflicted on him. Barry’s met Taako before, but he’s pretty sure he hasn’t really met _Taako_.

Lup opens the door to her apartment. “Taako?” she calls. “You awake?”

A head pops up from the couch, peering beary-eyed at them. Taako’s hair is a mess and he’s wrapped up in Lup’s massive comforter. He looks less like the world’s most dangerous assassin and more like a hungover college kid who’s slowly realizing he’s gotta drag himself to class soon.

“Lup?” Taako reaches up to rub at his eyes. “How’d you get over there?”

“I went to grab Barry,” Lup says, pointedly not mentioning the call with Lucretia. “You didn’t notice?”

Taako shrugs. Barry _thinks_ he shrugs. The comforter around him shifts in a way that’s reminiscent of a shrug. “Was asleep.”

“Good time for me to grab my boy then,” Lup says, moving closer to Taako and dragging Barry with her by their joined hands. “Taako, you remember Barry, right?”

Taako looks at Barry, eyes lingering on his neck. “Yeah, I remember,” he says, and then gestures to his own neck. “Sorry about the whole, uh, choking thing.”

Barry grins. He can’t help himself. “That’s all right,” he says. “Not really your fault. I mean, I probably would have choked me too.”

Taako raises an eyebrow at Barry. “Awfully understanding about me nearly murdering you in your own home.”

Barry shrugs. “Other people have tried to murder me in my own home for worse reasons. Yours was at least justified.”

“You’re weird,” says Taako, and then turns his attention to Lup. “Weird _and_ rich. Good job, Lup.”

Lup lets out an offended squawk, letting go of Barry’s hand so she can sit on top of Taako and his cocoon. “Rude, Taako!”

Taako makes an equally offended sound, shoving at Lup — gently though, and not with his metal arm. “S’true!”

Lup and Taako dissolve into half-coherent bickering, both smiling through offended noises as they swat at each other. It’s night and day from Taako’s first return, when Taako sat around motionless unless propelled into action and was so _careful_ about his actions, so tentative in everything he did as he felt out the role he’d assigned himself. Barry didn’t notice it as much at the time, but seeing Taako now, grinning up at Lup and blocking her hands every time she tries to hit him, it’s obvious how hollow he was before. This Taako looks worse — he’s lost weight and has dark circles under his eyes, seems smaller, all bundled up in his comforter — but he looks more _present_ too.

He looks like a man who’s fought his way out of hell and is ready to take well-deserved a break.

Barry’s having some cognitive dissonance looking at Taako too. Taako killed _so many_ people. Barry’s walked through the aftermath of his one-man war against the Hunger. Taako is _dangerous_.

Right now he just looks ready to take another nap.

“Taako’s right,” Barry says, interrupting the argument happening on the couch. “I am pretty weird.”

Lup and Taako stop fighting and Taako _beams_ at him.

“I like you,” Taako says, then looks at Lup. “I like him.”

Lup snorts, shifting so she’s not sitting directly on top of Taako. “He’s pretty good, right? I like him too.”

“Gross,” says Taako. “Hey, Barold, you wanna buy us fancy dinner? I wanna eat fancy dinner.”

Barry laughs, pulling out his phone. “Yeah,” he says. “I can definitely buy us fancy dinner.”

#

Barold orders in fancy dinner, which, Taako is sort of surprised about this because it had been sort of a _joke_ , except, no, Lup's boyfriend _is_ that nice. All Taako’s memories of being at the tower have a weird sort of emotional flavor to them — fear, confusion, Jesus Christ his brain's scrambled eggs, that was _Lup_ , what was he so scared of? — but the memories themselves are clear as crystal.

Barry had been... chill. Way nicer than he had to be, there's opening your home to your girlfriend's crazy dangerous brother, and there's doing custom repair work on his murder arm. There's something nagging at Taako's brain about him, too, but he can't figure out what. Something familiar. Maybe the guy —

"Taako?" Lup says, and he blinks.

"Huh?"

"Food's here," she says. "You okay?"

"Yeah, just thinking," he says, and doesn't elaborate. She probably thought he was falling asleep again, and if he's being honest, he's pretty sure he'd start falling asleep again if he kept sitting here for too long. The couch is nice, and the comforter is very warm. "What'd you get?"

"Japanese," Lup says.

They asked Taako what he wanted to eat, and the question was like injecting static into his brain, not so much the _content_ of the question, but the choice, that they were asking at all, _protocol does not allow asset_ — and then he shrugged and said: "Uh... you decide," and pretended everything was normal.

As if he knows what normal is. He's _pretty_ sure this is a brainwashing thing and not a _Taako_ thing, because he doesn't think he's indecisive. Except maybe he just doesn't _remember_ being indecisive. Lup had given him a vaguely concerned look until he stuck his tongue out at her on pure reflex and she stopped looking concerned. His instincts are steering him well so far.

"Cool," he says. "That's real specific."

She flicks his braid and offers him a hand to stand up. "Sushi and tempura, Mr. Pedantic," she says. "It's good! Have you had it?"

Taako takes her hand with his flesh one and lets her pull him up. "No," he says. "Don't think so."

"You'll like it," she says, letting go of his hand. "C'mon."

Taako follows her into the kitchen, bringing the comforter with him.

There's bags of takeout sitting on the kitchen table, along with Barry taking plastic containers out of the bags. Taako must have been really out of it if he hadn't noticed Barry coming back. Lup walks over and kisses Barry’s cheek.

Taako pulls a face. Lup notices and sticks her tongue out at _him_ this time, so he was definitely on to something before. The bickering and the arguing feels right. It feels _good_ to do and the more he does it the more he can remember doing it before. His brain is a mess, but Taako feels like it’s a mess he’s starting to get the hang of.

Barry’s got a look on his face — mixed confusion and amusement — that Taako knows, somehow, means that Barry’s an only child. “I just got a bunch of stuff,” he says. “Wasn’t sure what you’d like. This way you can try things.”

Barry smiles at Taako and pulls the lid off a row of what looks, to Taako, like pieces of raw fish draped over rice. A few shrimp. Some little orange balls wrapped in seaweed and a rectangle of uniform yellow _something_. Taako doesn’t know what the orange or yellow things are, but the more he looks at the maybe-just-raw-fish, the more he’s certain that, yes, it’s just… fish.

Taako sits at the table, frowning as he accepts a pair of wooden chopsticks from Lup. "This is... raw fish," he says, a question disguised as a statement.

"Yep," Lup says. She's got an expression like butter won't melt in her mouth.

Taako squints at her. He knows, somehow, that this is definitely the sort of prank that Lup would pull. That she _has_ pulled, even though he doesn't remember them.

Lup grins. "It's good! I promise."

Taako squints harder. The raw fish continues to be raw fish.

"Lup had the same expression you did the first time we got sushi," Barry says, sounding amused. "Promise she's not pulling a trick."

Taako points his chopsticks at Barry. "Technically I just met you, and you're _Lup's boyfriend_ , I'm not trustin' you as far as I can throw you," he says, and points his other hand at Lup. "And _you're_ my sister." He puts the chopsticks down and picks up a piece of the tempura with his fingers. "I'm sticking to this, thanks."

Lup and Barry both laugh, and it’s… nice. It’s nice to feel like they _like_ him and like they won’t try and make him eat fish if he doesn’t want to eat it. Taako has to work to keep the expression of faintly accusatory suspicion on his face instead of smiling.

He looks down at the piece of tempura in his hand and takes a bite of it to keep his expression from breaking. It's really good — crispy, salty, the shrimp is tender. He eats the rest of it in another large bite. _Everything_ he's eaten today has tasted good. He's spent pretty much the whole day sleeping or eating, sitting around in soft pajamas and a blanket.

Yesterday Taako tore a man's jugular out. He's trying not to think about it. Or to think about what he's been thinking. He feels like if he thinks about it too hard, he's going to remember some of the _really_ bad shit, and then he's going to lose his shit, and he's really tired of losing his shit. So he's not going to think about it. Nobody ever gave the Soldier shrimp tempura. And he's not the Soldier. He's Taako.

He’s gonna eat _so much_ fuckin’ tempura and then he’s gonna pass out in bed and nobody’s gonna try to stop him. His life, his body, his _brain_ , they’re _his_ now.

“Okay,” he says, reaching out to pick up one of the pieces of sushi with the yellow squares that look like they’re maybe egg. “ _One_ piece. If you promise it’s not a trick.”

“It’s not,” Lup says, and then picks up a lump of rice draped with raw fish and pops it in her mouth. She chews, swallows. “See? Not a trick.”

Taako tentatively, _slowly_ , puts the sushi in his hands in his mouth. The rice is sticky and perfectly cooked. The egg on top of it is soft and faintly sweet, the thing strip of seaweed holding it together briney in a way that pulls it all together.

Turns out, sushi’s pretty good.

“Those ones are mine now,” he says, reaching out to steal the rest of the egg sushi. “You can have the fish.”

Lup and Barry both laugh again and this time Taako doesn’t need to hide his smile. Life, it turns out, is looking up for Taako.

#

It’s dark. It’s dark and Taako can’t hear anything but the sound of his own breathing. He has his flesh hand on a wall as he walks down a long hallway, feeling for a door or a light switch or _something_ to help him make sense of where he is. He doesn’t remember how he got here. He can’t remember how to get back out.

The wall is brick and mortar, cool to the touch, and the floor under his feet is linoleum. Wherever he is is institutional. Maybe industrial. Not like… not like somewhere. He can’t remember where he came from. He can’t remember where he was before this. There’s _so much_ missing, when he tries to think about _before_. How’s he supposed to know anything? How’s he supposed to make decisions if they won’t let him remember anything?

Taako can’t remember who _they_ are. There’s been so many _them_. An endless parade of people who tell him they know best.

Taako’s looking for someone, he thinks. He’s supposed to find someone in this maze of hallways and dark, but he doesn’t know how to do that when he can’t see where he’s going and when his memories are like water slipping through his fingers.

He’s all alone and it’s dark. Those are his touchstones, except as soon as he thinks about being alone here he’s abruptly sure that he’s _not_. There’s someone else here. Someone who stops walking when Taako stops walking. Someone lurking in the dark, behind him, waiting for Taako to make a mistake. Waiting for him to be too slow.

Taako starts to run. He pulls his hand off the wall and bolts, trying to go away from whoever’s chasing him, but the faster he runs, the more certain he is that he’s not losing them. Whoever it is, whatever they want, they’re not giving up, and when Taako tries to reach for the wall again, tries to steady himself with his one landmark, it’s not there anymore.

He’s unmoored in empty space, the only certainties he has are the floor under his feet, the darkness, and the person lurking behind him. Taako doesn’t know where he is or what’s happening. He doesn’t know how to get _out_. He turns to the right, where the wall used to be, and runs and runs and runs. He runs until his feet are sore and every breath hurts his lungs. He runs until he reaches the point of exhaustion and _still_ he’s certain — he hasn’t outrun whoever is chasing him.

There are no footsteps behind him. Someone’s hand touches his shoulder and Taako jerks away, taking off running again, in the opposite direction, but he’s not going anywhere. It’s not _working_. The hand is still there. The hand is holding him down. It’s pinning him in place and someone leans in close, their breath hot on his ear. “ _Soldier_ ,” they whisper, their voice Austrian-accented and cloyingly familiar. “ _Sputnik. Nightshade. Ichor_.”

The cascade triggers ricochet around Taako’s brain and suddenly he’s still, not even attempting to run. He collapses, not to the floor, but into a chair — _the_ Chair. The straps close around his wrists and he wants to scream — to lash out and thrash around. He would do _anything_ to stop this, now, and still there’s no one for hims to lash out at. Still it is dark and he is alone.

“Soldier,” says the voice again. “Did you really think we would let you _go?_ ”

Taako’s heart is in his throat. _No_ , he wants to say. _No, you can’t do this to me anymore._

He can’t see it, but he can _sense_ the headpiece coming down around him and he _hates_ this. He wants to be home. He wants to be with Lup. He wants to —

Taako comes awake thrashing, startling Lup into consciousness beside him as he kicks out at an enemy who isn’t there. She sits up beside him, out of range, but obviously concerned. “Taako? Taako, it’s okay! Taako you’re fine.”

Taako doesn’t feel fine. His heart’s still racing and mother _fucker_ it was a dream. It was just a dream.

He reaches up to rub at his chest, watching Lup slowly settle back down beside him. “You okay?” she asks.

“Fuck, just — night terrors,” he says. “Don’t worry about it, Lup. Go back to sleep. Sorry I woke you with my _hell brain_.”

Lup snorts, reaching out to rub his shoulder sympathetically, but she’s already falling back asleep. “M’kay,” she says. “You sleep too. Wake me if you need me though.”

“Yeah. Course.”

Taako doesn’t go back to sleep. He doesn’t wake Lup again.

He’s gone from not enough to too much memory. Memories of being triggered into compliance, of being taken out at the last minute by someone saying the right words at an inopportune time. Those trigger cascades are still out there. If the handler in Jersey City knew some of them, other people will too. He can’t remember what all of them do — bonelessness, compliance, self-destruct… those ones are easy, but he knows there are more, and they’ll _work_ , probably, even though he broke out of _Sputnik_.

He’s not sure how any of this works. His brain’s a _mess_. He’s a danger to Lup — to _everyone_ in the tower — until he gets it straightened out, and to do that he needs to know what’s happening in his brain. He’s going to have to figure out how he broke out of _Sputnik_ so he can figure out how to do it again.

Which means he’s gotta let someone use the trigger words on him. Motherfucker, this is gonna _suck_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back, baby! Thank you for your patience while we took a brief break. We appreciate how nice you all were about it. We would also appreciate if you commented and left a kudos!
> 
> As always, you can find us on tumblr, where we're [@anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [@marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)!


	20. A Scanner Darkly

Taako spends a couple of hours lying in bed, thinking about his brain. It’s a clusterfuck and a timebomb and he’d like to shove it all under the rug and pretend everything is fine, but Lup fought hard to get him to come back to her and it feels shitty to just wait until it’s a problem again to bring it up.

He doesn’t know when _morals_ happened, but Taako’d like a refund.

Taako pretends to be asleep when Lup wakes up, because he might have morals, but he doesn’t want to have them _now_ , and then he actually falls back asleep. When he wakes up again, it's eleven in the morning and the air smells like bacon and oil — pancakes frying off — like Lup is trying to lure him out of bed with food.

As strategies go, it’s not a bad one. Taako wraps himself up in Lup’s comforter again and walks into the combination living and dining space. “Food?”

“Brunch,” says Lup. “You hungry?”

Taako’s stomach gurgles in response. He can’t seem to get enough food or enough sleep, like his body is trying to catch up on the deficit it missed out on while he was murdering bad guys. Which, maybe it is, but Taako doesn’t think that’s how body’s are supposed to work. “Starving.”

“Sit,” says Lup, pointing her spatula at the kitchen table and smiling at him. She’s doing a pretty bad job of hiding her concern. “You fell asleep again all right? After your dream?”

Which, yeah, Taako thrashing awake and then saying everything was _cool_ probably wasn’t the most convincing argument. He pauses, trying to figure out what to say — what to _ask_ for — and Lup frowns, dropping all pretense of casualness. “Taako? You good?”

"You gotta scan me," Taako says, giving up on any preamble. There’s no good way to ask Lup to re-traumatize him.

"What?" Lup puts down the spatula.

"You know, like brain shit. Gimme uh, what's the word, an MRI. CAT scan? You know, like, brain stuff. The Hunger did a shit ton of those on me. Gotta check the damage, Lulu, if I'm gonna be sticking around." Taako waves a hand at his head. “Take a look under the hood.”

"You sure that's a good idea?"

"Oh absolutely not. I’ll hate it," Taako says. "Probably gonna fuckin' lose it when we do this. But your boy Barold probably has all kinds of fancy imaging equipment, yeah?"

"Yeah," Lup confirms reluctantly. "He's not, like, super big on doctors these days."

"Yeah. So, brain scan. Me. Deffo soon."

"Why do you want your brain scanned?" Lup asks.

Taako sighs, rests his head on the table and stares into nothing. "So y'know how you found me, uh..." he hesitates.

"In a pool of blood with a dead body, yes. Real aware of that one, babe," Lup deadpans, which makes him laugh a little. Laughing hurts when you're lying your head on a table, so he lifts his head.

"Yeah, that asshole was able to get the drop on me because he had one of my cascade triggers. Fucker got me like I'd been tranq'ed." Lup looks really concerned now, so Taako hastily continues. "They're old as _balls_ , like, from the fifties. I don't think there's a lotta people who know 'em. But it's not _great_ that they're out there."

"What does this have to do with getting your brain scanned?"

"Well. That's mostly cause it's like... it's like swiss cheese up there. It's like a whole dump truck of _bad_. It's like someone took a egg beater up here and _scrambled_ everything, like, I didn't even think I was a person until a couple weeks ago? That's pretty fucked up, right? Like that's kinda fucked up."

"Yeah, T, that's really fucked up.”

Lup looks sad now, so Taako backtracks hastily.

"Aw, hey, no, don't look at me like that. Don't you wanna hear the rest of cha'boy's garbage plan? I just wanna make sure that I'm not gonna be, like, dangerous to you. Well, more than usual. Hey Lulu? You're letting the world's best assassin sleep in your bed. You sure you wanna be doing that? Sure 'bout your life choices here?"

Lup laughs at his teasing, which is good. That was his intention here. He grins, self-satisfied.

"Okay you jerk, fine,” she says, picking up her spatula again and sliding her slightly overcooked pancakes onto a plate. Lup brings the food to the table, sitting opposite Taako. “What's the rest of your plan?"

"Well. First, you use the one trigger I remember. Drops me like a sack of bricks. Then you stick me in a brain machine. Then the brain machine scans me and I do my best not to absolutely lose it, but at least I won't lose it and _hurt_ anyone, cause of the trigger. Then you test the trigger again while I'm still dropped, see what the fuck is going on in the brainspace while you do that. Then... I dunno, you stick me on the couch for a couple hours. Nobody gets hurt, everyone wins."

"Taako. That's a shitty plan."

"Yeah it's not great," he admits. "But hey — two birds with one stone! We test if the trigger words still work, _and_ we get my brain looked at."

"I'm not going to just _incapacitate_ you, Taako!" Lup looks genuinely upset at the thought. She reaches out and grabs his hand, as if physical contact will stop his dumb plans.

"Well, who else am I gonna ask?"

"That's not the point! You shouldn't be giving _anyone_ that sorta power over you."

"Lup. Like you would ever hurt me.” The concept of Lup hurting him is unfathomable.

Lup frowns, obviously unconvinced. "Let's ask Barry about this first, okay? No point speculating until we see what he's got in his workshop. Eat. I made _so_ many pancakes. You want peanut butter and jam? I’m going to have peanut butter and jam."

"Yeah, alright," Taako says, and picks up a fork, embarrassed by his sincerity. And hey — embarrassment. That's a person emotion. Look at him go. He’ll have the whole person thing down before he knows it.

#

Barry gets the text from Lup asking for him to come up because she wants his opinion on a Taako medical thing a little before noon.

 _Not an arm thing,_ she writes. _Also tell him he's wrong!!!_

Three exclamation points. Must be urgent. Barry taps his keyboard to type a response, but another message comes through before he can respond.

_Also we have breakfast food, if you're hungry <3_

Barry smiles and texts Lup a heart emoji and the words: _Coming up now_

She sends back three heart emojis and a fire emoji. They've been dating for about a year now and it still makes his heart do a little flip when she does stuff like that, that he has someone to send heart emojis to. Also weird to consider: _Captain America_ using emojis.

But good weird.

The nice thing about being a billionaire is that you can set your own hours. Barry works a lot not because he _has_ to, but because he likes to — and if he wants to take an afternoon break to help his significant other with a problem, he can do that, no problem. He sets down his tools — he was tinkering with a new propulsion system for the Iron Man suit, something that could probably be commercialized later to keep the board happy.

“Don’t touch anything,” he tells Dum-E, giving the robot a pat before heading up to Lup's apartment. Lup and _Taako_ 's apartment now, he guesses.

Barry knocks on the door. Technically he has override access to all the entrances and exits in the building, but he doesn't broadcast that. He knows how creepy it is and he already gets teased about the security camera thing even though he _doesn’t_ watch the footage — just lets JARVIS keep an eye on everything for him.

Lup opens the door and pulls him in, kissing him as she does. Barry stumbles, hands moving to Lup’s waist automatically as he kisses her back.

" _Gross_ " Taako says, from somewhere behind Lup. "Get a room!"

"This _is_ my room," Lup says, pulling away. "You're just jealous that you don't have a boyfriend."

"Ch'yeah," Taako scoffs. He's sitting at the kitchen table picking at a stack of pancakes covered liberally in what looks like... peanut butter and jam. The serum takes a preposterous amount of calories. "Anyway, lemme pitch this idea at you, Barold: my garbage brain, your future brain scan machine. Science!"

Lup walks over and flicks Taako's forehead. He makes a noise like an angry cat. "Explain it properly, or eat your pancakes and _I'll_ explain it — oh, babe, do you want pancakes?"

Barry shakes his head. Watching the twins interact with each other now is very different than the first time Taako came to the tower. Taako, wrapped in Lup’s comforter, looks like he’s about five minutes and some quiet time away from a nap, but his personality takes up so much more _space_.

Watching him and Lup together is better than television. "Maybe later. Okay, so — MRI. Actually, getting you an MRI isn't a bad idea, although the metal arm would be kind of a dealbreaker for a traditional machine.”

"So you can't do it?" Lup says, a little hopefully.

Barry shakes his head again. He’s trying to think about consequences — maybe they should wait for Merle, who’s an actual doctor. Last time he did something for Taako he ended up almost getting choked out. But that was the _old_ Taako. It’s just a scan. They can handle it without Merle. Barry does all his own medical imaging and he’s fine.

"I've got a modified machine — er, it's not on the market yet, or patented, that basically just scans the head area. I started working on it after… you know, this." He taps the glass that covers the arc reactor embedded in his chest. Barry doesn’t like the feel of shirts stretching over the reactor. He has a whole drawer full of custom shirts with a cut out for it to peek through. Being a billionaire has some advantages.

"So you _can_ do it," Taako says.

"Yeah,” Barry says. “I'd actually really like to get some images for comparison to the Hunger scans — only if you're up to it, though."

"Don't take his side on this!" Lup says. “This is a _bad_ plan.”

"Okay, _one_ of you explain things to me, because I don't understand what you're arguing about," Barry says, looking from Lup to Taako. He's no good at subtlety, and he suspects that they're each giving him half of two different pictures.

"We're not _arguing_ ," Lup and Taako say, indignantly, in remarkable synchronization, only enhanced by the way they give each other twin expressions of betrayal afterward.

Yep, definitely siblings. Barry's an only child. This is _fascinating —_ for him especially because Lup’s the woman he loves. "Seriously, guys. Okay, so Taako wants me to image his brain. That seems reasonable to me. You're afraid he's going to go all creepy assassin?"

"Oh I'm _gonna_ go all creepy assassin," Taako confirms, too casual as he looks down at his pancakes, making a show of cutting them up into bite-sized pieces. "Thing wrapped around my head? That's gonna be, uh, a _real_ bad time, my dude." His hand slips as he cuts his pancakes, knife sliding awkward across the plate and splattering Lup’s comforter with jam. Taako drops the fork. "Aw, fuck."

Lup is already passing him a napkin, mouthing _See_? _Say no!_ over Taako's head _._

Normally, Barry would just follow Lup's lead. He trusts her. She has good judgment — albeit with a penchant for high-risk, high-reward plans that have led to many a _discussion_ over the Avengers conference table. If she thinks that Taako's plan is bad, it probably is.

The thing is... well, Barry's curious. He doesn't even _really_ know what they're talking about here, other than some way to keep Taako still for an MRI, which Taako wants and Lup doesn't want him to have. And there's something he remembers from doing a report on Captain America and the Howling Commandos in sixth grade: _Taako Taaco was known for his keen strategic mind along with his remarkable skills with a rifle_.

On a completely separate note, he's never letting the twins know that he did a report on them in middle school. Lup would never let him live it down. He now suspects Taako would be even worse.

"Okay, Taako, why do you want your brain scanned?" Barry asks, sitting at the table and picking up a plain pancake. He rolls it into a cigar and takes a bite.

Taako watches Barry with naked fascination, pausing in his attempts to clean the jam off his comforter. "First of all, that's a crime against breakfast. Second, I want it scanned because I’ve got cascade triggers floating around out there, and the Hunger has at least one set, probably more. But I wanna like, take a look at everything and check if, you know, shit's getting _better_ or if I'm gonna have to like, I dunno, kill some more dudes. Leave the tower. No way I'm stayin' around Lup if I'm just up for grabs with any chump who read the right handbook. The good thing is I don't think any of 'em were ever digitized? You probably would’ve found them when you were stalking me. But, yeah, I want to check if the triggers still work and all that. My brain. Your scanner. Let's tango."

"What he's _not_ telling you," Lup says, handing Barry a plate and grabbing a fork from the drawer in an unsubtle attempt to make him eat his pancake like a person, "is that he found out when a handler used it on him and then he was completely unable to move and the handler put him in the — the fucking _mindfuck chair_ we found him in the Hunger base. You know, the one that meant he was covered in blood and couldn't move from the chair? And now he wants to tell me what the trigger phrase is so I can use it on him."

Lup’s clutching the fork in her grip hard enough to bend it.

Barry reaches out to touch her wrist. "Uh, hon?"

Lup looks down and startles, dropping the bent fork onto the counter. "Shit, sorry," she says. "I didn't mean to... I'm just —" She sighs.

"Worried," Taako supplies. "You're just being dumb and worried, and it's gonna be _fine_. It's better than me, like, going apeshit and hurting you or Barold. No offense, but Barold is _squishy_."

"You can call me 'Barry,' you know," Barry feels the need to interject.

Taako waves a hand. "Barold is funnier. But yeah. I mean, we gotta do it sometime, right? And it's gonna be shitty either way. I'd rather not find out when someone infiltrates the tower and gets themself a fun lil' Taako puppet for their murderquest."

Lup pulls a second fork out of the drawer, twisting it around in her hands. "I just," she says. "It _sucks_."

"No shit," Taako says, and eats the last piece of his pancake. He’s playing it cool, but there’s a deliberateness to Taako’s cool exterior that belies hidden anxiety on his part too. "But yeah, Barold, what's your take?"

Barry hesitates because Taako... is right. If there's passcodes out there which could semi-permanently reprogram Taako into a wind-up soldier, then Barry wants to get as much information as possible about whether those codes are going to work still or not. And using them to both get the MRI done and to test them while getting Taako’s brain scanned seems like a neat solution to the problem of Taako freaking out during medical procedures.

Honestly, Barry thinks Taako's earned a little freaking out. The problem is that when Taako freaks out, people get hurt. Barry had the bruises to prove that. So this seems pretty logical, actually, except —

"You're conscious while you're paralyzed?"

"Yeah," Taako admits. "That's the part that's _really_ going to suck."

"Oh," Barry says. That makes the whole plan less appealing. He has no desire to willingly perform any procedures — even non-invasive ones — on a subject unable to protest and probably likely to start dissociating during the experience, if the arm is anything to go by. He's not actually all that fond of inflicting psychological damage on people.

"Why don't we just sedate you?"

"I don’t know if you missed the memo, my dude, but I got the Nazi knock-off of Lup’s serum. Sedatives aren’t super effective and I’m gonna _hate_ your machine. Using the trigger’s gonna keep me from hurting someone. I wanna know what’s happening in there. I want my memories back and I want to figure out how to tell someone who tries to use triggers against me to go fuck themselves. We gotta use a trigger and we gotta do a scan.””

"Well, fuck," Barry says. He eats the rest of his pancake. Thinks as he chews. "Sorry, Lup, I think Taako's right."

Lup snaps the fork she's holding in half.

#

Lup and Taako don't really talk for the rest of the day. Or, they talk around each other in the way that two people in the middle of a fight talk around each other. They still sit on the couch together; Lup still floats a blanket over Taako when he falls asleep in the living room and shakes his shoulder when it's time for bed.

"I can't believe you've been back less than a week and we're already fighting," Lup says, a few minutes after pulling up the covers.

"This isn't fighting. Nobody's broken a finger yet," Taako says, referencing the worst scuffle they ever had as children. They were seven and arguing over a _hairbrush_ , of all things, and Lup had accidentally bent Taako's finger too far back. There was a crack like wood snapping, and they both stared blankly at the bent — _broken_ — finger. Taako started crying and then Lup started crying too, and their aunt had rushed into their bedroom, splinted Taako's finger, and gave both of them a sound scolding as she pet their hair.

The finger had healed wonky, slightly crooked even when they were adults. Lup wonders if Taako remembers it had been a finger on his left hand.

"I apologized!" Lup says.

"No you didn't. You just started _bawling_ ," Taako says, grinning.

Lup laughs, as much from relief as from amusement, because now they're not fighting anymore, because Taako's safe and they can get into stupid arguments and make up after, and because Taako _remembers things_.

She doesn't want to lose this again.

"I did," she insists. 'You just don't remember cause you were _crying_."

"I was _seven_ , and leave me alone — I have _brain damage_ ," Taako says, and that brings her mirth to a halt. "Sorry, too soon?"

"Too soon," she confirms, although she's glad he's feeling better enough to joke about it. "I had to pull you outta a Hunger lab covered in blood, babe."

"Yeah, that was a lot," Taako agrees. "Okay. No brain damage jokes."

"No brain damage jokes," she confirms.

They're both lapse into silence, then. The room is very dark, and quiet in the way that all the rooms in the tower are quiet — so different from the apartments they used to live in that were open to any stray sound, the spooky forest noises in Europe. Barry has killer soundproofing. It used to freak her out a little bit, especially when she was the only one living on the floor. She spent a lot of time in the common areas, or in Barry's workshop, where he was almost always tinkering with something, or at least she had the bots for company. And she spent a lot of nights in Barry's bedroom too. The sound of someone else breathing — especially her boyfriend — was reassuring.

Having Taako back means her bedroom feels less isolated. It makes Lup feel like she’s not alone.

#

Taako's not as confident about the whole brain scan debacle as he pretends. He feels kind of bad for guilting Lup into agreeing to it, but not _really_ bad. _She's_ the one being irrational, not him.

Two days after the whole conversation, he's in Barry's workshop for the first time since getting to the tower with a sense of self. Taako remembers being in the room before, but he remembers it the way he remembers watching a film — vaguely, like he’s watching someone else's actions using his limbs. The memories feel curiously hollow.

He doesn't like thinking about them, but he remembers what drove him here the first time: he thought Lup wanted his arm fixed. He wanted his arm fixed so he could be useful. It unnerves him, how _reasonable_ that train of thought seems even now, because he wants no continuity between his current self and the distinct-lack-of-self that piloted his meat.

But. He needs to figure out his brain shit, or else he's the most dangerous thing for Lup in the entire city.

She won't even fight back, if he attacks her. He shot her _three times_ and she _didn't fight back_.

But that's a problem for a different day. Now that he's sitting on the couch in Barry's workshop, he's having to keep himself from picking nervously at the fabric or biting his lip. Maybe he's doing too good a job keeping still, because Barry and Lup both keep shooting him concerned looks. He ignores them.

Weirdly enough, the room doesn't trigger his fight-or-flight response. Taako thought it might freak him out, be a little too close to — _sterile labs, pulling him out of deep-freeze, injections and blood being drawn and tests and does this hurt? How about now?_ — but Barry's workshop is... nice. Kind of like a garage and a description outta a scifi pulp — hey, he remembers paperbacks! — and a living room all mashed together. The couch is really comfortable. There's a pillow and a blanket, like someone spends a lot of nights sleeping on it.

Taako can't believe Barry's a billionaire _and_ a workaholic. That's just wrong.

"You good?" Barry asks, pausing as he rolls a piece of... some kind of equipment, smaller than any Taako’s used to seeing — and he’s been subject to a _lot_ of equipment — over to the couch.

He blinks. "Yeah, just thinkin'. How come you work so much? You're a _billionaire_."

Lup laughs. "I asked him the same thing!"

"I like working," Barry says mildly. "When you're a billionaire, you don't have to depend on anyone for funding. You can build whatever you want."

"Nerd," Taako says.

Barry shrugs. "Guilty as charged. You want me to set this up around your head before or after Lup uses your drop code?"

"Before," Taako says, without hesitation. He doesn't know what's going to set him off. And he _knows_ he's going to be set off. He's braced himself for, just, general suckage. He's not sure what his brain is going to throw at him, and that's the worst part of this — the uncertainty. If he knew how he was going to react, then he could prepare himself accordingly.

"Sure, bud," Barry says, voice all gentle.

Taako frowns. "Don't fuckin' patronize me.”

Barry just gives him a _look_. "You're willingly using a Hunger code on your brain because you're worried about hurting your sister," he says. "Least I can do is be nice to you."

"Oh," Taako says, deflating. Lup smirks at him, from an angle that Barry can't see. Yeah, Taako can see why she likes him — Barry’s a good guy. "Sorry."

"No problem," Barry says, and plugs the last cord into an outlet hanging from a ceiling. "Alright, ready to go when you two are."

Taako's not ready, but who's he kidding? It's not like ten minutes — half an hour, a day, a couple weeks — is going to make a difference. "Born ready, my man."

Lup sits down next to him. He had given her the codes earlier that day, written them down on a scrap of paper in handwriting he doesn't remember, and she had read them and then they had ceremonially burned the paper in a frying pan. It had been weirdly satisfying.

Taako grins at Lup, hoping that it lands on confident and not concerning. He knows she still doesn't like this. Lup always wears her emotions not just on her sleeve, but kind of across her entire outfit.

"Hit me," he says.

"Sputnik, nightshade, ichor," Lup says, softly, so far from the cold enunciation the handler used in the Hunger bunker. The effect is still the same: the words triggering something in his brain as surely as a syringe to the neck. He drops like all his strings have been cut, a complete collapse of all muscular control. Lup catches him before he can feel more than the first lurch of vertigo.

"Shit, that really does a number on you, huh?" she says, voice wavering, but hands steady as she lowers him onto the couch.

It’s called a drop code for a reason, Taako wants to say, but his face is slack and his mouth is unresponsive. He blinks every 6 seconds precisely. He wonders how they programmed that into him, then decides that's a train of thought he's really not interested in pursuing. At least he's still breathing automatically, although as soon as he thinks that, he switches to manual, because bodies are a bitch.

Someone lifts his head and a pillow is placed between his neck and the edge of the couch. The hands pause as they lower him.

"Will this interfere with the scanning, babe?"

"No, shouldn't be a problem," Barry responds. Taako can't see them talking, only the ceiling, grey concrete pockmarked by what looks like repulsor blasts. Some of his hair has escaped his braid and lies across his face.

"Cool. Hope you don't mind being slightly more comfortable, T."

Lup pushes his hair off of his forehead, tucking it behind his ear.

He doesn't feel comfort. He doesn’t feel anything at all.

#

Lup says the three-word string and it's like a light goes out in Taako's eyes, like she flipped an off switch. His head tips back so she has to scramble to brace him before he cracks his skull on the back of the couch. He told her that this was a _drop code_ but she hadn't expected it to be the dramatic. It's like Taako's unconscious, except for the way he stares into space. She wonders for a moment whether she should close his eyes, but then he blinks. Okay. Guess automatic reactions work.

"Shit, that really does a number on you, huh?" she asks, trying to arrange him in a vaguely comfortable position. His head is tilted too far back. He's going to have a strained neck when he comes to if she leaves him the way he is. She walks over to the side of the couch and grabs a pillow, lifting Taako's head and placing the cushion between his head and the furniture. She hesitates a moment and looks at Barry, who is rolling the weird custom MRI equipment over.

"Will this interfere with the scanning, babe?"

"No, shouldn't be a problem," Barry shakes his head, and positions the MRI equipment over Taako's head, before going to fuss with his computer system.

"Cool. Hope you don't mind being slightly more comfortable, T," she quips. It feels wrong not to have him say something back. He looks like a doll laid out under the lights in Barry's lab, or a mannequin, even though he's still in his pajamas. He's so _still_. There's hair in his face. She pushes it off his forehead and behind his ear. It's only partially an excuse to check that his skin is still warm, that there’s still a pulse thumping under his skin.

"How long's this gonna take?" she asks, sitting down next to Taako. She moves his arm a little because it looks like it's at an uncomfortable angle, repositioning his elbow so that it's limp against the couch and not awkwardly splayed out. It feels wrong to be manhandling Taako like this. The fact that other people did this to him deliberately, that they used this on him and _hurt_ him while he was unable to even _say_ that he was in pain — that they thought of him as a _tool_ , as an _experiment_ , as a _weapon_ that they could control, and it didn't matter that there was a _person_ in there — makes her angry. It makes her _furious_ on Taako’s behalf because how _dare_ they do this to _anyone_ , but especially to her brother?

But there's a place for anger and it's not here.

"About half an hour, I think," Barry says, grimacing apologetically. "And then I'm going to do another scan — a timelapse after you use the trigger again — and that's going to be about an hour, I think? Maybe shorter. This is new tech."

Lup nods, looking down at Taako. ”So you're down for a couple hours, huh?" she asks, addressing Taako even though he can't respond. "Shit, maybe we should put a movie on for you or somethin'. Radio?"

"That might interfere with my readings," Barry says, not unkindly. "It’s _really_ new equipment. Sorry, you're going to have to just wait this one out, bud."

The fact that Barry talks to Taako while he's like this — it makes Lup feel good about the fact that he's the man she's in love with. "Lup? You gotta get outta the way, hon — you might screw with the imaging and I have the feeling we only want to do this once."

Lup doesn't want to move. She doesn't want to get up and step away from the couch, leaving her brother looking like a _corpse_ — fuck, she thought he was dead and she thought she made her peace with it, except what happened to him was _far worse_ than death. But at least he's _back_ , and now he's safe, and she never got a body after the fall from the train, and it's sort of like all her worst fears realized here, in Barry's lab, in the tower, Taako lying there, so still, not moving, and its 2012 and she's in New York and —

"Lu?" Barry's voice cuts in. "You good?"

She takes a deep breath. Forces herself to stand. "Yeah babe, I'm good." When she turns back to the couch, Taako looks just like she found him in the Hunger's lab, the headset like a halo, like a grim parody of the mindwipe machine she destroyed in the basement.

Barry nods. "Okay. We'll try and do this as fast as possible, yeah? Just hang tight, Taako."

Barry presses a series of buttons on the console and the MRI machine begins to whir.

The headset moves downward to encircle his head, slowly — _so_ slowly. Lup can't see Taako’s face anymore, but she can hear his breathing get harsher. Lup wants to tear the machine away from him and take him back to her apartment. She moves closer to Barry instead.

"He must really hate this," she says softly, hoping that Taako can't hear her.

"Mm," Barry says, eyes fixed on the screen, preoccupied by operating all the machinery and making sure that the device is scanning properly. "I'm going to go as quick as I can."

"I know, babe," Lup says. "Are you sure I can't go over there?"

Barry shakes his head. "Definitely not." He glances up at her, concern written all across his features. "You want to go grab him your comforter or something?"

He's offering her an out, if she needs to take a break. If seeing Taako laid out and being scanned is too much for her. Barry won't bring it up later if it is. He wouldn’t judge her. Lup shakes her head. "You've got blankets down here. I'm fine."

"Okay," he says, and presses a final button before turning back to her. "So, half an hour."

#

Time passes, or he assumes it does. He's not really paying attention — the numb horror drowning everything but the animal panic, the thrum of the headset around him, out. It should hurt, but it doesn't. It's just loud the high-low whirring, but it covers his eyes, a rhythmic pulse and he wonders under the thick layer of fear enveloping him when he will start to disappear and he hates that there's enough of him to think about disappearance, the fucking self, if he could move he would rip off the headset and tear it in half and he would kill all his fucking handlers and —

But time passes, and nothing happens. The hurt — the stabbing feeling, the leaking feeling — never arrives, and slowly, he can start to piece the ripped seams of his memory back together.

The year is 2014.

He's in Barry's workshop.

He's getting an MRI.

His breathing slows. Oh God. He feels sick. If he hadn't been paralyzed, he would have attacked Lup and Barry. He could have seriously hurt them, _fuck —_ it's no comfort to be vindicated. He thought he was getting wiped. He isn't being wiped. The knowledge doesn't actually help with the condensed ball of fear in his stomach, as real as any physical wound. And he can't fucking _move_ and the MRI keeps reverberating around him, and it keeps going and it keeps going and he can't tell how long it's been until —

The noise stops. Barry's voice, muffled through the headset. "Alright, first one over. You're doing great. Okay, give me a second and… Lup, go."

"Sputnik, nightshade, ichor," Lup says, and even with the headset as a distraction it cascades through his brain, and he's already limp on the couch but he can feel it like a shock all the way down his brainstem, and that's psychosomatic, but it feels real so it's gotta be real. "One more hour, babe, and then you're free to go."

Another whole hour. He can't even perceive how long an hour is. It could be another eternity. It could be another five minutes. It could be the next second. It could be days. The whirring starts up again, the heavy pulse, and that's it, he can't take this anymore, he's —

#

The MRI machine rotates to a halt. Barry taps a few buttons and it begins its slow slide upward, away from Taako's head. Lup lets out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding and glances at the clock on Barry’s workshop wall.

"45 minutes, huh?" she says. Barry nods, and turns off the console. "I cut some time off by compiling — well, just a lot of things. How long until Taako can move again?"

Lup isn't exactly sure. Taako had said that the drop code worked for "an hour, maybe," but she's not sure whether he's highballing or lowballing. He's still completely motionless.

"Probably another fifteen minutes?" she says as the MRI stops moving complete. "I'm going to go put this back." She doesn't like the way it hovers over Taako, and while she knows intellectually that its a perfectly benign machine and that Barry wouldn’t deliberately use anything on Taako that would hurt him, watching him being scanned was... well, the MRI looked a little too close to the way the Hunger mindwipe chair machine thing looked for comfort.

"No, let me," Barry says hastily, jogging over to the device. "You don't know where this goes, and it's, uh, finicky."

"You saying I'm gonna break it?" Lup asks.

Barry smiles, a little sheepish. "Well, you're definitely stronger than me."

She grins back. "Yeah, alright, babe. You put your toy away."

Barry unlocks the break on the stand and begins rolling it somewhere into the depths of his workshop — it's sort of a garbage pit, but a garbage pit made of expensive mechanics Lup only sort of understands some of the time. She watches him for a moment before going to sit next to Taako. She hopes he gets up soon. Maybe she should move him to the apartment?

Lup doesn't have any illusions about Taako’s mental state when this is over: she'd bet her back pay that he's going to be all kinds of messed up when he's able to move and vocalize it again. He's probably kind of messed up right now, and upset about being unable to move. She knows she would be.

Maybe it'd be worse to move him upstairs when he can’t do anything but let her drag him around. She probably shouldn't manhandle him too much. She touches his hand. "Jesus, you're cold."

There's blankets piled somewhat-messily at one end of the sofa. She leans over Taako and picks one up, spreading it haphazardly over her brother and tucking her legs under one corner as well.

It's just a waiting game now. He'll be up soon. A small, irrational part of her fears that he won't, or that if she leaves and comes back, when she returns Taako will no longer have a pulse. It's stupid and irrational, but it's also easier to sit next to him and wait than go prove herself wrong.

"Is it mean if I make you listen to my music?" Lup asks, after sitting with him in silence for a moment. "Doesn't matter, I'm going to do it anyway. JARVIS, put on my playlist, please."

Janelle Monae begins playing. She hasn't introduced Taako to any modern music yet. Lup realizes. It hasn’t been long enough. Taalo used to love listening to the radio.

They have time now though.

If she pretends that Taako is asleep and not paralyzed, this could have been any quiet winter weekend, back in Brooklyn. Although the occasional muttered curse or metallic chirp as Barry moves stuff around with Dum-E's "help" is decidedly out of place.

A minute into _Electric Lady_ , Taako's metal arm twitches. Lup whips her head around to stare at him intently. Nothing else about his countenance has changed, except for the twitching of his metal hand, a spasm of the fingers. She watches, holding her breath, as the hand moves around, landing on her arm and then stroking it as if he's not sure what it is. Oh, right — he can't see.

She reaches for Taako’s metal palm slowly with her other hand, holding it gently. Taako entwines their fingers.

"Wonder why that came back first," Lup says. Taako's face spasms, but he doesn't speak. She waits patiently. Soon he moves his other arm, making a fist, and a rippling shudder runs through his torso.

"Oh c'mon, the music's not that bad," she jokes.

He lifts his head. His eyes are wide and blank. Empty. It’s the same kind of expression he wore the first time he came back — the lights are on, but nobody’s home.

"Aw, T," Lup says, trying to keep the unhappiness out of her voice. "C'mon. Let's go upstairs, yeah? You did fuckin' great today."

He stands, the blanket falling to the floor, and doesn't say anything, looking in her direction as if confused, as if waiting for a clearer command. Lup tamps down the urge to grimace. She's trying not to give Taako anything that could be constituted as an order, and she's trying not to direct him, but it's hard, especially when he seems so vacant, as if he without some outside force he would just stop, the mechanism of his momentum broken.

She bends down to pick up the blanket and puts it back on the couch.

"You want me to come up, honey?" Barry calls from where he's pulling a cover over the machine and Dum-E is pulling the cover off the machine as soon as Barry’s done. "I can have JARVIS compile everything, interpret(word) the data from wherever."

"Nah, babe. We've taken enough of your time," Lup says, because Barry's been more than generous with his time, and he's her boyfriend but he has a company to take care of, research to do, and she feels that she's been asking a lot of him on top of all that. And not girlfriend stuff — it's been a while since they've been able to spend some one-on-one time without Avengers business, or Taako business, or any of the other thousand responsibilities they have. She knows Barry doesn't mind, but she's going to flag that thought for future perusal. Right now, she has Taako to worry about.

It's selfish, but Lup kind of hates how much time she spends worrying about Taako. It's even more apparent after the _relief_ she felt being able to bring Taako home, and the weeks before that she spent with a knot of fear in the pit of her stomach, thinking she’d run into a Hunger base and find him there, a cooling corpse bleeding out on the floor.

"Alright, well, I'll be up later — with info, if stuff's compiled. Or er, just me," Barry says..

"Just you is great," Lup assures him, and he smiles. She grins back, entirely genuine despite the situation, although it fades when she turns back to Taako.

She puts a tentative hand on his elbow, relaxing when Taako doesn't react negatively — throwing her across the room or jerking away — and gently pushes him toward the glass doors that bracket the end of Barry's workshop. Taako goes where he's pointed, Lup following alongside.

The worst part of this is how quiet he is. They take the stairs back to the apartment, Lup talking about just... stuff — music and movies and _hey-remember-when_ , and Taako silently alongside her.

She's not sure if it helps for her to talk, but he doesn't seem to mind it. It's not like the first time, with the arm, where she was scared that she had broken him, although it's the first time she's seeing him go from being _Taako_ to this blank absence, which kind of actually makes this worse.

She leads him to the kitchen and he sits down at the kitchen table without prompting. She sits down across from him. He looks at her without really seeing her.

"How're you doing?"

"Okay," he lies, in a toneless voice. One that means Taako isn’t home right now. She hates that she can recognize it, that she _knows_ when his brain is — no, she's grateful that she can tell, because the other option is not being able to know when he's really fucked up.

"You should eat something, T," she says. "Serum."

"Alright," he says, still distant, all flat affect. "I'm not hungry."

She hates telling Taako to do things now. She used to have no problem with ordering him around, back before everything broke bad — before the future slammed into them like a wrecking ball through brick. He's a contrary fuck and they spent as much time arguing as agreeing, telling each other to do shit. The problem is she doesn’t know, now, how much amiability is a _choice_ for him, or whether compliance was ground into him like dirt into the heel of a boot.

But the supersoldier serum's metabolic needs are ridiculous. He really does need to the calories.

Lup opens the fridge and pulls out one of the protein shakes that line the bottom shelf of the door. She's not super fond of them, but they're easy and mindless to down after a fight, a workout, or on a long day when she can't be bothered to cook. And the strawberry flavor is actually pretty decent.

She shakes the drink and places it in front of Taako — the silent ask is a compromise between her desire to tell him to eat and trampling all over his autonomy. Lup suspects that when he's like this, it's easier for him to just listen and that when he shakes himself out, he's going to feel uneasy about the situation no matter how nonchalant he acts.

Taako picks up the shake and pauses, looking up at her with the first hint of lucidity he's shown so far. "Serum," he echoes. "You should drink one too."

Lup blinks. "Yeah, all right."

She walks back over to the fridge and pulls out a second carton, shaking it up, and closes the door before walking back and sitting at the table. It feels kind of dumb to be at the kitchen table just to drink shakes, but as soon as she takes a sip, she feels better. Taako — and by extension _she_ — was right about joining him in drinking one.

Taako drinks his shake efficiently, but the set of his shoulders seems to relax by degrees as he sits and sips, slower than he usually would.

He puts down the empty carton.

"Okay, so you were right, that was dumb, but I stand by my decision," he says, and that's pure Taako right there.

Lup laughs, relieved. "No comment," she says. "But for the record? Yeah. Fucking dumb. How're you doing? You were kind of out of it." Understatement of the century.

He shrugs. "I'm... good?"

"Taako."

"Alright, alright — kinda floaty still. I was real outta it, but it's mostly gone." Taako’s inflection is still kind of off but the fact that he's talking like himself is probably a good sign. "Also? I would’ve definitely fucked you up if you hadn't drop-coded me, so, uh, cha'boy Taako was right."

"You would have _tried_ ," Lup jokes, and he finally makes a facial expression at that — a tired, gap-toothed smile.

#

Taako doesn't regret getting the brain scan, even with the lingering tension in his neck, the anxiety that's faded into a quiet wariness. Even with the space in his memories that only registers as a blur of vague impressions, concentrated _feeling_ and fear that coalesces into him sitting at the kitchen table drinking one of the kinda-gross shakes that Lup sometimes consumes.

He's really tired, which is stupid, because all he's done this afternoon is lie on Barry's couch.

“I kinda want to nap,” he says, annoyed with his body for deciding he needs to lay down _again_. “I’m _tired_.”

Lup rolls her eyes, reaching over to take the empty shake bottle from him. "Yeah, you dissociated for like a full fucking hour, babe. Of course you're tired. It's been stressful as all hell. You should lie down."  
  
"You're not my mom," Taako says, but gets up because sitting somewhere softer than a kitchen chair sounds pretty good.

Within fifteen minutes of sitting on the sofa, he falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed this chapter, please leave a kudos and comment!
> 
> As always, we can be found over on tumblr where we're [anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com)!
> 
> If you like this fic, you might also want to check out some of the awesome artwork people have made for it over on tumblr:
> 
> [Kravitz, looking cool](https://lexicals.tumblr.com/post/184138991971/revamped-this-little-scribble-seeing-as-ive) by @lexicals/Dooney_Oie  
> [Taako and Lup dressed as Cap and the Winter Soldier](https://herbgerblin.tumblr.com/post/184084535096/all-the-things-you-prayed-for-by) by @herbgerblin  
> [Taako unmasked by @taakos-and-depression](https://taakos-and-depression.tumblr.com/post/183542730284/ive-been-loving-marywhal-and-anonymousalchemist)  
> [Taako wondering who the hell Taako is? by @scribbles-of-a-cool-ninja](https://scribbles-of-a-cool-ninja.tumblr.com/post/183221762474/scanner-kinda-ate-this-one-didnt-it-anyway-have)  
> [Taako says fuck this by @alichcouldgetthisbitch](https://alichcouldgetthisbitch.tumblr.com/post/184039558687/a-messy-sketch-i-did-for-anonymousalchemist-and)


	21. Russian Roulette

When Barry rings the twins' doorbell, Lup answers the door with a finger to her lips, the universal _shh_ sign. She's wearing pajamas — Barry's heart skips a dumb beat at the sight of her in an Iron Man shirt. He has mixed feelings about the fact that they're selling Avengers™ merch with the arc reactor printed on them, but somehow seeing Lup in it is alright.

"Taako's asleep," she says quietly. "In the living room. Because he likes to cause problems."  
  
"Well, as long as it makes him happy," Barry says. "I brought you a present." He holds out his tablet which has the processed scans from Taako’s harrowing MRI on it. "Also me."  
  
"Electronic devices! My favorite," Lup says, and welcomes him in with a kiss. "You, also my favorite." Barry feels his face heat up a little, despite the fact that they've been dating for nearly a year now.  
  
She takes the tablet from him and wakes it up as she leads him into the apartment. Images of Taako’s brain—the new scans juxtaposed with images dragged out of the data dump and files scavenged from the Hunger bases Taako razed—fill the screen, and she glances back at Barry. "You had time for all of this?"  
  
"JARVIS did," he says, and yawns. It's getting late. Not super late, and it's not like Barry keeps a particularly consistent sleep schedule — honestly his idea of sleep normally consists of drinking as much coffee as he can and keeping himself conscious for as long as possible — but it’s late enough that outside many of the lights in Manhattan's high-rises are dark against the dark evening sky.  
  
"Sorry to keep you up working on this, babe," Lup says, voice even softer as they walk through the unlit living room. Taako is an awkward lump taking up two-thirds of the couch, an Avengers™ blanket covering everything but his hair and an outstretched metal arm that gleams in the moonlight.

"It's no trouble," Barry whispers. "I'd be awake anyway."  
  
"We can talk in the bedroom?" Lup suggests. "I don't want to leave, because..." She trails off into silence, but Barry knows what she means. She doesn’t want to leave because she doesn't want her brother to wake up alone. Because she's scared that he'll leave while she's not watching. Because she’s scared she’ll turn her back on him and this will all have been a dream — that there will be no miraculous recovery, no Taako who survived the fall in the Alps.

Barry's heard most of her worries — both the realistic ones and the ridiculous ones.  
  
"Sounds good," he says, and she flashes a grateful smile and leads him to the bedroom.  
  
Barry's been here before — of course he has, this is his building and this is the floor he maybe custom-fitted for Captain America while he was still deluding himself about not having a crush on Lup. This is his _girlfriend's_ bedroom — he's spent a lot of quality time here. They usually spend nights in his bedroom though. He's got a thing about waking up in strange places now, ever since the disastrous trip that changed the course of his life, even if the strange places are his girlfriend's apartment.  
  
He's not pretending he doesn't have his own issues. Barry figures you're allowed, after you get kidnapped by men masquerading as terrorists hired by your father’s former business partner who’s trying to shuffle you out of the picture so he can run the company himself. At least Barry’ss issues are productive, mostly — not sleeping means plenty of time to work on the latest verion of the Iron Man suit — or that's what he tells his therapist.  
  
Between Taako's reappearance and just, generally being busy running Hallwinter Industries while doing Avengers things, he hasn't been back here in a couple of weeks. Before, it was decidedly Lup's bedroom. Now it's very much Lup _and Taako's_ bedroom. There's an extra duvet on the bed, a couple more pillows, clothes strewn across the dresser and on the floor. Not that Lup's a neat-freak, but it's as if Taako's presence has encouraged her to be less put-together, bringing back old habits. Barry remembers Lup telling him that she and Taako shared a bedroom when they were kids.  
  
Lup drops onto the bed with the tablet and motions lazily for Barry to join her. He sits on the side of the bed and Lup passes him a pillow, tugging him down to lie beside her.

"So what's the verdict?" she asks, carefully casual as she tucks herself into his side  
  
"Well, the good news is his brain looks like it’s healing in ways the human body really shouldn't be able to, so, uh, he's sort of a miracle of modern science," Barry says wryly. “From what I can tell, anyway. I’m not an expert on neuroscience but I’ve been doing some reading.”

"So he's getting better? From the stuff the Hunger did to him?"  
  
"I think so? There's, uh, a real obvious difference between the Hunger scans and the scans I took earlier today, here, see—"  
  
He leans over to pull up the images. First, the Hunger scans, where there's brain damage on level with multiple petechial hemorrhages, focused primarily on the frontal lobe — spots of white stark when mapped across the otherwise grey image of Taako’s brain. Then, the scans from today: still horrific, but less so. Some of the white dots have disappeared entirely.  
  
"Huh," Lup says, oddly quiet — almost reverent — her eyes fixed on the images of her brother’s brain.  
  
"The bad news is that he's got some real damage between the connections between different parts of his brain — just a metric ton of scarring — and there are some real signs of trauma to the front lobe still, which is generally where things like memories are stored."

Lup frowns as he points things out to her on the screen.  
  
"But," Barry says. "And I'm not Merle, so I can’t promise anything, but it's not like anyone really knows that much about how the serum works anyway, you know, between you disappearing and Andrews getting shot and my dad dying…” He trails off and shrugs. “If we’re going off of how he’s been remembering things, even with this much damage still evident in the scans... I'd guess that, eventually, he's going to get everything back."  
  
"All his memories back?" Lup says, and she sounds so uncertainly hopeful that he can't help but put his free arm around her.  
  
"All his memories back," Barry confirms. "I think. Don’t quote me on this. We should probably send this to Merle, but it doesn’t… _seem_ like there’s any damage."  
  
"Oh. That's — that's real good," Lup says, her voice wavering. “Yeah. Send it to Merle. Get him to confirm and maybe come over to see Taako in person. Taako’ll like him.”

Barry looks down at the tablet, opening his email so he can the scan to Merle. He gets halfway through composing the email — attaching the files, waiting for them to load, typing in Merle’s email (magic_hands_57@yahoo.com) with his free hand, and writing “Dear Merle,” — when he hears Lup sniff quietly. He looks back up, alarmed, because _oh no_.  
  
"Are you crying?" he asks. "I, uh, I don't know what to do if you're crying. Wow. That was... the exact wrong thing to say. Good job, Bluejeans. Sorry Lup."  
  
Lup laughs, pressing her face against his shoulder. She’s shaking against him and he hopes it’s from the laughter and not because of the crying.

"You're doing fine, babe,” she says, pulling back to look at him, green eyes bright and a little red-rimmed. “I'm just happy, I think. I don't know. It's just — I woulda been fucking grateful to just get him _back._ Even if he didn't remember anything. Even if he acted like he did when he first arrived, you know? If he didn't ever fucking... like, if he wasn't what I remembered, that would have been fine. I mean, no, it wouldn't have been fine. It would have sucked, but at least he'd be safe and alive, and this time last year I thought he was dead. So." She pauses, pressing closer to him. "But he's still Taako. And he's gonna get better."  
  
She says it like a prayer.  
  
"I'm really happy for you," Barry says, because he is. She deserves all the good things in life. When he was younger, watching movies by people who pretended to understand Lup’s life, he used to think that Captain America's story was beautiful, tragic — but so heroic. A tragedy that _meant_ something, that was worth it.

Now he just thinks that Lup's sort of been dealt a shit hand. He wants to make her life easier any way he can — money, time, holding her in her bedroom while looking at images of her brother's brain on his tablet.  
  
"Do you ever feel like things are too good to be true?" she asks, after a moment of quiet, her voice small.  
  
Barry thinks about the fact that he's lying in his girlfriend's bedroom with his girlfriend, Lup, Captain America, the most amazing woman he knows. The fact that he's not dead in a cave somewhere. The fact that he's considered a superhero. The fact that he saved the world from an alien invasion, that his corpse isn't floating light years away through the void of space in a high-tech tin can.  
  
"Yeah," he says. "All the time."

He shifts the tablet in his hand so he can more easily give Lup a hug. His thumb brushes against the touchscreen and there’s a small, familiar ding. He looks down, despairing, at the cheerful _Message sent!_ in his email app.

“Aw beans,” he says. “I just sent Merle the email without anything in it.”

Lup laughs at him and pulls him in for a kiss. It’s the best sound he’s heard all night.

#

Taako wakes up on the couch and it's dark, which is confusing because it was definitely mid-afternoon when he fell asleep. But the lights are off and there's no sunlight leaking from behind the blinds. The television is off too and there's a fleece Avengers blanket draped over him, which is actually pretty ideal. It’s soft and toasty warm.

He feels groggy, but better — a little more present. Kind of hungry.  
  
Taako stands, taking the blanket with him, wrapping it around himself so he can wear it as a hooded cape. It's probably like four A.M. or something, this is valid. He pads over to the kitchen and opens the fridge to dig around for something to snack on. Food in the future is wild. Lup’s got a disposable plastic tub of _pre-sliced cheese_. He opens it up and peels off a few slices. He's pretty sure cheese like this wasn't around when he was a kid, but he remembers, like, four things from when he was a kid so maybe he'll ask Lup.

He eats the cheese slices plain, one after another, and closes the door again. There's _so much_ food in the future. Taako’s gonna try it all, even the weird stuff. He did sushi — there’s nothing holding him back now.  
  
Taako wraps the blanket more tightly around himself and walks to the bedroom. Can't spend the whole night on the couch, even if it _is_ a huge sectional with enough room to sprawl out on.  
  
The door is cracked open, and he nudges it a little wider, trying not to wake Lup up, and then pauses in the doorway. There's already two people in bed, although they’re not even under the covers. Lup and Barry, cuddling in their sleep, Lup half on top of Barry's chest. It's the most grossly sappy thing that Taako's ever seen. Barry's still in _jeans_. Jesus, what a couple of disasters.  
  
There's a tablet on the bed next to them. Taako walks over silently — weird how easy it is to not make a sound when he wants to — and picks it up. It doesn't have a password, and the screen brightens to life beneath his touch and there’s images on it, greyscale pictures of —oh, hey, that's his brain. It’s pocked with white spots, like some kind of polkadot monstrosity.

He's pretty sure brains aren't supposed to look like that. Taako decides he's taking the tablet with him. He's also pretty sure that Lup won't like him looking at it without her, and he's pretty sure he won't know what half the data means. He's not a brain scientist. Taako still wants to read through it, though. It’s _his_ brain.

He looks down at the couple snoring on the bed, all cozy and sickeningly sweet. "милый," Taako says, unwrapping the blanket from around himself. He does his best to lay it over them. There. Now they'll know it was him who stole Barry’s tablet. He picks up his comforter from where its shoved at the bottom of the bed and drags it after him and into the living room.  
  
On the couch, he settles the fluffy blanket on his lap and sits cross legged as he scans through the images of his own brain, the blue light illuminating his face. The tension in his spine loosens as he flips through them. He’s not an expert, but there’s less white on the scans from Barry’s machine. He’s pretty sure that confirms that his brain is repairing itself, that eventually the cascade triggers won't work — that he'll probably get every bit of his self back someday, hopefully soon.  
  
There's still the PTSD, but he can deal with that. He laughs to himself, settling in on the couch. It's ironic that what was done to him in a Hunger lab is going to fix what was done to him in a Hunger lab.

His life, Taako thinks to himself, is incredibly stupid.  
  
He falls asleep holding the tablet, cocooned in the duvet on the couch.

#

Barry jolts awake and sits up frantically, dislodging Lup in an ungraceful slide off his chest as her eyes snap open and she scrambles for her shield. Her hands find only sheets and Barry's thigh. She stills, looks at him still whipping his head around to stare at the bedroom before looking at her and pausing. He has a terrible bedhead. He slept with his glasses on and they've left a red mark against his cheek.

"Good morning," he says, sheepish.

"Oh, shit, guess we fell asleep," Lup says, trying to force the adrenaline coursing through her system to _calm down_. She looks down at the blanket tangled around them. Little Avengers logos, cartoon Iron Man masks and skulls, small versions of her shield, hammers, arrows for RQ and yellow eyes for Merle. She frowns. "Isn't this Taako's blanket? Wait — where's Taako?"

Barry is patting the sheets around them, confused. "My tablet's gone."

"I believe these are all related, sir. Ma'am," JARVIS's says from above. "At approximately 4:23 AM, Taako came in, saw the two of you, and replaced the tablet with his blanket. He then returned to the living room to scan the compiled data and sleep. His heart rate and breathing patterns indicate that he is still unconscious. The current time is 9:43 in the morning."

"Whoops, I didn't mean to kick him out of his own bed," Barry says.

Lup shrugs.. "If he wasn’t okay with it, he wouldn’t have let us sleep. Or left you a blanket. He spent most of the afternoon asleep, anyway. Hey — do you think it's a problem that he's sleeping so much?"

Barry shakes his head. "I don’t think so. Probably his brain trying to repair itself. You spent the week after DC pretty conked out, and then you were fine. We should ask Merle. Why, do you want to go wake him up?"

"Kind of," Lup admits. She doesn't exactly _miss him_ , but... okay, she does miss him. He's her _brother_. He's been getting a lot of sleep and she kind of wonders what he thinks about the readings. She's sort of annoyed he just took the tablet and didn’t wait to look them over with her and Barry so they could explain the scans to him, actually, but that's Taako all over.

Soon his annoying character traits are going to stop being reassuring and are going to start being obnoxious again.

"Well, go wake him up then," Barry says, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand.

He's right. Lup could go wake Taako up. This is something she can do.

“Brilliant, babe,” she says, leaning in to kiss Barry’s cheek before pushing the blankets off of her legs and clambering off the bed.

In the living room, just like JARVIS said, Taako is sprawled across the couch under his ridiculously fluffy duvet, sleeping silently, the only sign of movement the slightest wavering of his hair as it’s moved by his breath.

A lifetime ago, Lup would have jumped on him. Today, she throws a pillow across the room, aiming for his face. Taako’s eyes crack open and he catches it just before it hits, letting out a yelp of surprise and falling off the couch.

Lup can’t help herself — she doubles over laughing as Taako gives her a dirty look and gets to his feet, as graceful as anyone who just fell off a couch while wrapped in a giant comforter can be.

She grins at him, unrepentant. "Did you sleep on the couch all night?"

"Да, я сделал, потому что вы были грубыми," he says, and while she can read the sarcastic tone of his voice, she blinks because — Russian?

"English, T," she says.

"Я говорю по-английски?" Taako says, brow furrowing.

"You're speaking Russian, Taako," Lup says.

He looks immediately surprised. "Русский? Я говорю по-русски?"

"Taako, I have no idea what you're saying," Lup says, and she's starting to get worried about this, because she's starting to think that this isn't Taako fucking with her, it's Taako's brain fucking with him. "Hey babe," she calls back into the bedroom. "Come out here a second?"

Barry comes half-jogging out. "Why, what's up?"

"Taako's Russian. Tell me that it's not just me hearing this."

Taako scowls. "Я не русский! Это не то, что я хочу, чтобы трахаться."

"Well, this is unexpected," Barry says.

Taako says something else in Russian, looking even more frustrated. "Великий. Сегодня я русский. просто замечательно!"

“T, we still can’t understand you,” Lup says, not unsympathetically.

Taako frowns. “Мой мозг плох!” Taako says, his groan of frustration transcending language as he dramatically collapses face-down back onto the couch.

Lup sits down next to him and pats his back.

He turns his face so it’s visible. He’s pouting. Lup pokes his nose and Taako scowls.

“Hope this wears off soon,” she says.

Taako gives her an alarmed look. “Что делать, если это не так? Что если это кто я сейчас?”“Okay, we really need someone to translate for you — wait, you can understand us, right?”

“да,” Taako says, which, okay, “ _da”_ is one she understands.

“JARVIS could translate,” Barry suggests, but Lup has a better idea.

"Or,” she says. “We could call Kravitz.”

#

Kravitz is folding laundry. The tower has a laundry service, and probably a whole roomful of laundry robots tucked away in the basement, but Kravitz doesn’t trust like that. Letting someone else wash his clothes means giving _anyone_ the opportunity to stick listening devices on his clothing, or remotely detonated bombs, contact poisons — there’s an endless list of opportunities. If he let the laundry service wash, dry, and fold his clothing, he’d spend the afternoon going through the fabric with a fine toothed comb when he got it back.

So he does his own laundry. He’s not paranoid. This is perfectly reasonable precautionary behavior, considering the last few years. Considering how tight security in the tower otherwise is. Considering his entire life. These are all things that Kravitz has done to other peoples laundry.

He doesn’t own much clothing anyway, and he only keeps essentials at the tower. The apartment here, despite the fact that he’s been staying at it for the last few months, despite it obsentibly being _his apartment_ , still doesn’t have much of _Kravitz’s_ stuff in it at all. It doesn’t feel like home the way RQ and Istus’s place does — except for the pink knit blanket Istus gave him to help warm up the apartment when he moved in and the little things he’s knit and left here, where none of the other Avengers ever come.

The blanket sticks out like a sore thumb against all the dark colors and leather. It’s very soft. It’s Kravitz’s favorite thing in the apartment, and now it’s freshly washed and smells like Wildflower Meadow. He folds it into a neat square, rubbing it between his fingers.

Kravitz is thinking about packing. Now would be a good time for it — all his clothes are clean and he doesn’t have a _reason_ to stay at Hallwinter Tower any longer. Taako is back, and he’s done helping Lup with the hunt for her brother. Despite his conversation with RQ and Istus the other day, he can’t help feeling a little superfluous, and despite his joking about being unemployed, he _really_ doesn’t like being at loose ends. It’s not in his training.

Lucretia had mentioned something about robots. Maybe he ought to call her and help with that — there’s always _some_ global crisis that needs fixing, and with Captain America effectively out of the picture for the next few months, and presumably Iron Man alongside, it might be a good idea for Kravitz to get back in the field. If Kravitz is on call, then Lucretia might be less insistent.

Not that he begrudges Lup the break. If it takes her brother needing her help to get her to sit out and slow down for a bit, then that’s fine. Taako is important.

But without Lup around, or Barry — who has never been the most _consistent Avenger_ — or Merle — apparently in another dimension? — or Magnus — somewhere in space? — then it’s just Kravitz and RQ left to be on call. So maybe Kravitz can’t _afford_ to just sit around the tower waiting to be useful anyway.

After he’s done folding his laundry, he’ll call Lucretia. Lup and Barry will understand if he leaves to take the heat off them. It’s a good reason to leave. Kravitz folds a pair of boxer-briefs decidedly in half.

JARVIS’s mechanical voice cuts through his thoughts. “Sir, Mr. Hallwinter is requesting your presence in the Captain’s apartment.”

Kravitz frowns, suddenly on edge. “Is something happening?”

“The Captain says to let you know there’s ‘a _situation_ ,’ that requires your expertise” JARVIS says, and Kravitz can _hear_ Lup’s air quotes in his tone.

“Tell her I’ll be right up,” Kravitz says, putting his laundry down. Guess he’ll call Lucretia later.

#

Lup’s hot spy friend walks into the apartment with the practiced stride of someone who is used to pretending they’re not in a hurry. “What’s the situation?” he says, eyes darting around the room, looking for something out of place, pausing briefly on Lup and Barry, lingering on Taako.

Taako resents this. “[Apparently _I’m_ the situation,]” he says. “[Cool your jets. Lup’s panicking over nothing.]”

Kravitz blinks. “[What do you mean?]” he responds back in flawless Russian, and oh, _that’s_ why Lup called the guy, right, because he’s some sorta Soviet spy. Taako’s memories of watching Kravitz testify before the Senate are fuzzy, but he does remember that. Kravitz’s English is accentless — or, he guesses, Kravitz’s American accent is flawless. Taako forgot that it’s his _second_ language.

In Taako’s defense, it’s not like he spends a lot of time thinking about Kravitz.

“What’s he saying?” Lup asks. “Translation, Krav? Please?”

Kravitz turns to Lup. “He said that you’re ‘panicking over nothing’ and I asked him what he meant.”

Lup frowns at Taako. “ _You’re_ the one that was panicking, not me.”

Taako sticks his tongue out at her. “[Was not!]”

“He says he wasn’t,” Kravitz says. “Can someone actually explain what’s going on?”

“[My brain is broken, again,]” Taako says. “[I woke up and now I’m _Russian_ , why am I _Russian?]_ ”

Kravitz frowns, only the slightest hint of facial expression. He really takes this spy shit seriously — kind of playing into the stereotype, with the deadpan, all black outfits thing. “[Are you saying that you can’t speak English?]”

“[I guess? Nobody understands me except you so _yeah,_ I guess. It sucks. Cha’boy’s brain is a nightmare and my head hurts and I wanna go back to sleep and _what if I’m stuck like this forever_?]” Taako says. He’s exaggerating for dramatic effect. Mostly. “[Tell Barold he broke my brain. This is his fault.]”

Kravitz looks at Lup and Barry, who are hovering like concerned parents. They _should_ be concerned. Taako’s brain is fucked. Again. “He says he thinks the scan might have triggered this.”

“[That is _not_ what I said!]” Taako says. “[If you’re going to translate for me, translate _accurately_.]”

“Oh, crap,” Barry says. “That’s possible, I think. We — well, Lup — also used his trigger phrase a couple times in a row so he wouldn’t lash out at us while we did the scans. That’s a lot of stress to put on him all at once. We _really_ need Merle to get back from that other dimension so he can help us out with this out.”

“[See?]” says Taako, gesturing at Barry. “[I _told_ you he broke my brain. Tell him I said that!]”

“[Sounds like Lup helped break it,]” Kravitz says, in Russian, straight-faced and serious, but definitely trying to fuck with Taako. Like he hasn’t been fucked with enough in the past twenty-four hours. “[Should I let her know too?]”

“[Say what I said!]” Taako doesn’t see why this is so hard. “[Barry broke me!]”

“He thinks that sounds right,” Kravitz says, turning back to Lup and Barry.

“He’s mad,” Lup says, like Taako’s an angry cat and not a human being who’s just suddenly only speaking _Russian_ and nothing else. “It’ll be okay, Taako. We’re going to figure this out. It’s just a small hiccup.”

“[Of course I’m mad, I’m _Russian_ now,]” Taako says, glaring at Kravitz from within his comforter. “[Do you know how _cold_ it is in Russia? I can’t move there. I don’t care _what_ they called me — I want a beach, not this, but here I am, suddenly Russian and tall, dark, and handsome over here is censoring my words. Barry’s a _billionaire_ and a _superhero_. When you’ve got that much money it’s fine if people hurt your feelings. Aren’t your Russian? I’m sticking it to the bourgeoisie here. You should support this!]”

Kravitz blinks at him, looking surprised, and then his lips twitch into a smile and he ducks his head, chuckling softly. “[Sorry,]” he says. “[You’re right. I wouldn’t wish a Russian winter on anyone.]”

Lup’s hot spy friend has a nice smile. Taako studies him for a moment, then gestures at Lup and Barry, raising his eyebrows.

Kravitz rolls his eyes and turns to look at them with his nice smile. “Taako says to tell you that what he _actually_ says is that it’s Barry’s fault his brain is broken now and that he’s a capitalist so I, as a Russian, shouldn’t censor Taako’s anti-capitalist sentiments to make them more palatable for American consumption. Also that he doesn’t want to go to Russia because it’s cold.” He glances at Taako. “Accurate enough?”

“[Acceptable,]” Taako says, settling back down on the couch.

“Okay,” says Lup, “so he’s definitely still Taako — that’s good to know.”

“Sorry, Taako,” Barry says, smiling even though Taako just told him he was a bourgeois pig responsible for his brain being bad now. Taako kind of hates how much he likes Barry. “If it’s any comfort, I’m sure you—”

He’s cut off by a sudden, shrill ringing coming from his watch. “Sorry,” he says, let me—oh, hang on. I guess Merle’s back from the other dimension.” Barry taps at his watch and the ringing stops. “Merle, you’re on speaker with me, Lup, Krav, and Taako.”

“Hey Bluejeans,” says whoever the fuck Merle is, good naturedly. “Why’d you send me a picture of a borked brain?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special shout out to AlwaysAmused and NorthernAurora. Your discussion on the last chapter was a _delight_. We're so glad you both enjoy the fic. If all y'all enjoyed this chapter, be like them and leave a comment or a kudos!
> 
> Also, the Russian in this chapter is very badly translated and we apologize to actual Russian speakers.
> 
> We can be found on tumblr where we're [anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com) and [marywhal](http://maywhal.tumblr.com). Come over and say hello! <3


	22. Worm-ergency

Taako raises his eyebrows as he looks at his sister and Barry because _really?_ “[Did you send my brain to a stranger?]” he asks. “[You’re just sharing pictures of my _internal organs_ without asking me first? Who the hell is _Merle?_ ]”

“Is that Russian?” Merle asks, his voice emanating from Barry’s watch. “Is this a Kravitz thing?”

“Shit, sorry Merle. I meant to send you a follow up email, but I, uh, fell asleep instead.” Barry glances at Taako. “It’s Russian, but it’s not… a Kravitz thing, exactly. Is your line secure?”

“No idea,” says Merle, like he’s never even heard of security. There’s a part of Taako’s brain that registers this — a member of the Avengers who isn’t taking care of their comm lines is a member of the Avengers who is a vulnerability in the team. Except that doesn’t _matter_ because Taako’s not the Winter Soldier anymore. He’s maybe not entirely Taako anymore either and his brain is a _fucking nightmare_ , but he’s definitely not the Soldier and he’s not going to attack _Lup’s friends_ unless they fuck up and make him.

“I’m not in your dimension, so probably?”

Or maybe Merle is less a vulnerability and more just really fuckin’ _weird_.

“How — never mind,” says Barry, shaking his head. “I’m assuming the answer to any question I have is just going to be _magic_.”

“Probably,” Merle agrees cheerfully. “Not my fault you don’t understand basic inter-dimensional phasing. So the Russian brain? _Real_ fucked up. Super weird scarring — theygot fried like a potato. Is the guy alive? What did the outside look like?”

“A lot like me,” says Lup. “Merle, that’s Taako’s brain. My brother. He, uh, he’s alive and — you know what? It’s a long story. We wanted to get your opinions on the scans and what they show because of, you know, the whole neurosurgeon thing.”

“[I’m Taako,]” Taako says. “[It’s my brain that they sent you _without my permission_ , because I guess that’s something we’re just doing now — sending off medical images to strange doctors who say things that don’t make any sense.]” Taako’s maybe feeling a little irritable. Unless this guy can fix him so he’s not speaking Russian, Taako’s not up for a game of twenty questions. Or having his brain insulted. _Sure_ it’s a piece of garbage, but it’s _his_ garbage. He looks at Kravitz. “[Translate that.]”

Kravitz clears his throat. “Taako says he’s irritated that you sent someone he doesn’t know images of his brain without his consent,” he says. “And that he’s Taako.”

“The Russian thing — that new or has it always been a thing?” Merle asks.

Taako scowls. “[I did an MRI and now I’m doing _this_ ,]” he says. “[Except I can’t _tell_ that I’m doing this — I just am. I try to say something in English and it comes out in Russian. I can understand you, but none of you bothered to learn another language, _I guess_. _Americans_.]”

Kravitz lets out a cough that sounds suspiciously like a smothered laugh. “Taako, uh, says that it happened after he did an MRI. He woke up and he wasn’t able to speak English. He understands everything fine, but the only language he’s able to speak right now is… Russian. I assume it’s because the Winter Soldier program originated there and it’s what they would have programmed him in initially.”

Merle hums on the other end of the line. “Have you tried turning him off and on again?”

There is a long pause. Taako stares at Barry’s watch, feeling _extremely_ offended. “[I’m not a _computer,_ old man!]”

“Oh, he didn’t like _that_ suggestion.” Merle laughs on the other end of the line. Taako already doesn’t like this dude. “I’ll be back in your dimension tomorrow. I’ll pop by to take a look in person. Taako should try taking a nap. It might help his brain restart.”

“[I just _woke up_. I’m not going to take a nap,]” Taako says. “[Aren’t you supposed to stay awake when your brain is fucked? Kravitz, tell him he’s stupid.]”

“[I’m not going to tell Merle he’s stupid, Taako,]” Kravitz says, because _Kravitz_ is the worst too.

Taako pulls his Avengers blanket closer around his shoulders, glaring daggers at Kravitz, then looks at Lup. “[You need to speak Russian. This is how I live now and obviously we can’t trust the grim reaper over here to translate for me so it’s on you.]”

Lup shoots Kravitz a helpless look. “Krav?”

“Taako wants you to learn Russian because he thinks this is just who he is now and he doesn’t trust me to translate,” Kravitz says, the traitor. “Apparently I’m not doing an exact enough translation of his words.”

“[You’re _censoring_ me. What happened to the first amendment? I have the right to freedom of speech here!]”

Kravitz turns his attention back to Taako, raising an eyebrow. “[I thought you were Russian now?]”

“[I’m a _dual-citizen_ ,]” Taako snaps. “[I’ve got _rights_.]”

“[I’m not the government,]” Kravitz points out, all mild-mannered and faintly amused. “[In fact, I’m fairly certain the American government would arrest me if they could figure out how to do it without looking like they’re Hunger plants. I can’t violate your first amendment right.]”

Kravitz has a point. Taako thinks. Honestly he doesn’t’ remember _exactly_ what freedom of speech _means_ , but Kravitz seems pretty confident. “[I want something to eat,]” Taako says, to change the subject. “[Ask Lup what we’re gonna do for breakfast.]”

“Taako wants to know what you’re going to do for breakfast,” Kravitz says, looking at Lup. “He’s hungry.”

“Do you still need me?” Merle asks. “I’ve got a _thing_ going on over here — gotta deal with this big worm.”

“Worm?” Barry repeats.

“ _Big_ worm,” Merle says. “ _Real_ big. I’ll come by tomorrow. I’ve got a few tests I gotta do before I can pass judgement on the brain thing.”

“Tomorrow would be great,” Lup says. “Thanks, Merle.”

“[Don’t come,]” says Taako. “[I don’t need another person poking at my brain. Taako’s _good_. Lup just needs to learn how to speak Russian and everything will be _fine_.]”

“Bye Merle,” Barry says, tapping his watch and ending the call. He has the sense to look apologetic as he turns his attention to Taako. “Sorry we didn’t ask you before forwarding your scans to Merle, Taako. He was a neurosurgeon before he was an Avenger — someone we trust — and we needed a professional to take a look. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, but I’m still an amateur.”

It’s a decent reason, but it still doesn’t feel like enough of an apology. Taako doesn’t trust _any_ doctors. He’s experienced what they can do. And Barry’s rich. He can afford to do something nice for fucking up Taako’s brain and then sending pictures of it to his weird friend who’s in _another dimension_ spending his time with worms. “[Tell him he’s only forgiven if he buys me pastries for breakfast,]” he says. “[I changed my mind. Lup’s not cooking.]”

“Barry, Taako says he’ll forgive you as long as you’ll buy him pastries for breakfast,” Kravitz says, and looks down at Taako. “[Any requests?]”

“[Croissants,]” says Taako. “[The chocolate kind.]”

Kravitz nods. “He wants chocolate croissants.”

Barry grins at Taako, like he thinks maybe Taako’s not _serious_ about wanting chocolate croissants — like he’s not at all intimidated by Taako glowering at him from the couch, which is very rude, Taako knows from experience that he’s very intimidating — and pulls out his phone. “I can do that,” he agrees. “If you’ve got requests, just like JARVIS know too. He can provide you with whatever you want to eat.”

Taako’s eyebrows raise as the near-infinite possibilities for abusing Barry’s hospitality stretch out before him. Sharing images of Taako’s brain aside, Barry’s a pretty cool guy. Taako really _does_ like him.

He just needs to make sure _Barry_ doesn’t know that for a little while longer. After all, what’s the point of your sister dating a billionaire if you can’t take advantage of his money while he tries to make sure you like him?

It’s gonna be a good couple weeks, Taako decides. Even if Lup doesn’t know Russian.

#

Lup can’t understand a word that Taako’s saying, but it’s hard for her not to feel hopeful despite all that. Taako’s frustrated and grumpy and bundled up on the couch glaring at her like it’s her fault he can only speak Russian now. It’s obviously a terrible situation for him to be in — he’s snapping at them because he’s scared.

It’s just he’s also so obviously _Taako_ that it’s hard not to feel happy. The dirty looks he’s shooting everyone, his body language, the way he keeps ranting at Kravitz — that’s her brother. Taako always skipped past _scared_ to _outraged._ Even without the exact translation of what he’s saying, she can kind of get the gist.

Barry’s downstairs grabbing the croissants and she and Kravitz are making coffee. Taako’s sulking on the couch. Lup wouldn’t call it sulking to Taako’s face, but it’s what he’s doing.

“Thanks for dropping everything and coming down,” she says, keeping her voice low as she smiles at Kravitz. JARVIS would have been a perfectly good translator, but Kravitz is definitely more fun. Plus Taako and Kravitz are going to have to learn to get along eventually. The weirdness that happened during Taako’s first stay at Hallwinter Tower shouldn’t matter anymore.

“Of course. I’m here to help with whatever you need,” Kravitz says, pushing the plunger down on her French press. “I can… leave if you’d rather I not be here too.”

Lup glances up at Kravitz, raising an eyebrow. “Kinda still need you for translation, Krav. Despite Taako’s commands, I haven’t yet mastered Russian.”

A smile flits across Kravitz’s face, but he’s not putting much effort into it. Lup missed something. “I don’t mean now,” he says. “I mean… in general. Taako’s your brother. You’ve been apart for a long time. If you want to be alone with him and with Barry, I understand. I can head down to D.C. and stay with RQ and Istus for a while if it’ll make things easier for you.”

Lup wasn’t expecting that. It doesn’t even make _sense_. Kravitz helped her and Barry track Taako down. He came with her to Jersey to bring him home. The tower is his home as much as it is hers. Maybe a little less, since she’s dating Barry, but _still_ — he’s got an apartment here. “I don’t want you to go unless you want to go,” she says. “I’m kind of hoping you and Taako will become friends.” She pauses. “Is this about him shooting you? Because I’m sure I could convince him to say sorry for that. You’d probably only get one apology for both bullets, but I could make it happen.”

“That’s — no, that’s fine.” Kravitz looks surprised. He _is_ a spy. Maybe getting shot isn’t a big deal to him, although he _acted_ like it was when he was walking around showing off the scar on his stomach at every opportunity. “I don’t need Taako to apologize. I just thought you might want time with your family.”

“I do,” says Lup. “Babe, you’re my partner and my best friend. You’re part of this family too — whether you like it or not. No take-backs.”

Kravitz stares at Lup like she just blindsided him by starting the really, supremely obvious truth. “I… Lup, I —”

Lup knocks their shoulders together. “You’re a repressed spy,” she says. “I get it. We don’t need to talk about feelings.”

Kravitz hesitates for a moment, like maybe he wants to say something, but settles for smiling and bumping his shoulder back against hers. “Thank you,” he says. “Of course I’ll stay. I… hope Taako and I can be friends too.”

“Croissants!” Barry calls out, as he opens the door to the apartment and walks in.

Lup turns towards the door, catching sight of Taako’s head lulling to the side, like maybe he’s thinking a nap sounds good after all. Lup’s pretty sure that Taako has slept for at _least_ two thirds of the time he’s been back. “Hey Barry,” she says, jerking her head in Taako’s general direction so Barry will let him have first dibs over the pastries. “Coffee’s done. We’ll be right over.”

“Я проснулся,” Taako says, tone defensive.

“He says he’s awake,” says Kravitz, carrying the French press full of coffee and four mugs over to the table. Lup grabs cream and sugar. “Nobody was accusing you of being asleep.”

Taako just sticks his tongue out at Kravitz and reaches for the large brown paper bag of pastries Barry brought home. The paper already had spots in it from all the butter in the croissants and smells _amazing_. Lup hadn’t realized how hungry she was before.

She takes the bag once Taako fishes out a croissant, digging out a pastry of her own and letting Kravitz deal with pouring the coffee. Taako going Russian isn’t great, but it could have been worse. Now that Kravitz is here to translate, it’s hard not to focus on the good stuff.

“At least your brain is getting better,” she says, leaning forward to fix Taako’s coffee for him — loads of sugar and cream, because they can afford it now — so he doesn’t have to leave the protective cocoon of his blanket. “You’re Russian now, but the scans show you healing. So you won’t _always_ be Russian, so —” Lup turns to hand Taako his coffee and stops talking mid-sentence. Taako is asleep — out like a light in the corner of the couch, half a croissant still in his right hand. “Taako?”

“He _was_ falling asleep while we were making coffee,” Kravitz murmurs, voice soft. “Should we leave?”

Lup’s not sure. She kind of wants to wake Taako up again because it seems like he’s been sleeping a lot. It seems like he maybe _shouldn’t_ be asleep again so soon after waking and after insisting her _wasn’t_ going to nap.

“Do you think this means something’s wrong?” she asks, glancing at Barry and Kravitz, keeping her voice low too even though enhanced hearing kind of renders it moot. “Like, is it possible to get _too much_ sleep?”

“Maybe sleep is his brain’s way of healing itself,” Barry says, after a brief pause. “We can ask Merle more tomorrow. He’ll have a better idea of what’s happening to Taako’s brain right now. And maybe he’s right and Taako taking a nap will restart the language center in his brain or… whatever’s making him speak Russian and nothing else.”

“I’ll be here if you need a translator,” Kravitz says, taking a sip of coffee and offering her a small, sincere smile over the rim of his cup. “What are friends for?”

Kravitz pretends like he’s a cool spy boy, but he’s got a big heart underneath everything. Lup can see right through him. “Thanks, Krav,” she says, grinning at him. “Getting mad at you will distract Taako from being mad at Merle. It’ll be —”

Barry’s watch rings, cutting her off. Barry taps it quickly, before Taako can wake up and glare at them for continuing to have breakfast around him while he slept. “Sorry,” he says, getting to his feet. “Lucretia, give me a second. Taako’s asleep and I don’t want to wake him up.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “I see,” says Lucretia, keeping her voice low despite the obvious amusement in her tone. “Things are going well at the tower, I take it? He’s settling in?”

“Everything’s great,” says Barry. “No complications. Are you just checking in?”

“Not quite,” says Lucretia. “You and Kravitz both volunteered to step in when we required your assistance. There’s a situation in New Jersey.”

“Uh, okay,” Barry says. “A situation that needs assistance… _now?_ ”

“That’s not a problem, is it?” Lucretia asks.

Barry looks at Lup, then Kravitz. Telling Lucretia Taako’s brain is… kind of _malfunctioning_ a bit probably isn’t the best idea, even if the malfunction is innocuous. Lucretia’s not going to think talking Russian is nothing. “None,” he agrees. “Send me the mission briefing and Krav and I will head out right away.”

“Thank you, Barry,” says Lucretia. “Give Lup and Taako my best. Carey will forward you the information in a moment.”

Lucretia ends the call and Barry sighs. “Fuck. Sorry, Lup. Looks like JARVIS is going to have to do some translation after all. At least Merle’s not coming until tomorrow. Come on, Krav. We’ve got a mission.”

Kravitz gets to his feet, rolling his shoulders back. “I’m _really_ starting to understand why nobody likes New Jersey.”

#

Kravitz is ready to go in under ten minutes. He’s a professional. He keeps a go-bag and work appropriate clothes ready at all times. He hadn’t expected to need it for a little while longer, but it’s there, waiting for him, and changing into tight black clothing padded with light body armour, pulling on a jacket and his boots is easy. He’s on the helipad before Barry is.

There’s part of him that’s relieved Lucretia called. Taako and the Soldier aren’t the same, but hearing Taako speak Russian is familiar in a way that makes Kravitz uncomfortable with the secrets he’s been keeping. Hearing Taako bantering with him in Russian… well, it’s easier to separate his memories from the person Taako _really_ is when he’s not around Taako.

But Lup’s made it clear she wants Kravitz to stick around and Kravitz wants to honor that — they’re friends. He owes her that much. He owes her a _lot_ more than that, but Kravitz only has so many secrets left to keep. He’ll figure out a way to tell her about the Soldier, but for now it’s not pressing. For now, he can keep on ignoring it.

“Sorry!” Barry says, jogging over to Kravitz and the waiting helijet. He’s carrying the flashy metal briefcase that will become his Iron Man suit in one hand and a tablet in the other. He hasn’t changed out of his jeans. “Sorry, I was going over the briefing Carey sent over and, uh, checking some stuff.”

Kravitz raises an eyebrow as he opens up the helijet. “What stuff?” he asks. “Stuff we need to worry about?”

“No?” Barry climbs into the jet ahead of Kravitz. “Maybe — I’m gonna be honest, bud. I can’t tell if it’s something or if I’m being paranoid.”

“Being paranoid keeps you alive,” Kravitz says, following Barry inside and shutting the door. “Tell me what it is and I’ll let you know if it’s something we should be concerned about or not.”

A Barry’s who’s focused on a problem is a Barry who’s in no state to fly. “JARVIS, take us to Jersey?”

“Of course,” JARVIS says, over the intercoms of the jet. “The location is an office park in northern New Jersey — an electronics manufacturer with contracts for the U.S. military reported a security breach.”

“What JARVIS means is somebody’s attacking a business park in Elizabeth,” Barry says. “And I, okay, U.S. military secrets — that sounds interesting. That’s a good reason for someone to break into an office building.”

“But Elizabeth is next to Jersey City, which is where we found Taako,” Kravitz says, frowning. “That’s what you were checking.”

Barry nods and holds his tablet out to Kravitz. “There are lots of business parks in Jersey and this one _does_ have military contracts, but… I mean, look.”

Kravitz takes the tablet. There’s a map up on it with two buildings highlighted — one to indicate where they’re going tonight, and another on the building where he and Lup found Taako. The dots are disturbing close together. “That’s, what, maybe ten miles?”

“About that,” Barry agrees. “That’s, uh, that’s close, don’t you think? I don’t know _how_ they’d be connected but _boy_ it sure feels like they might be, don’t you think? It feels like… maybe the Hunger is involved.”

It does. Kravitz is still alive after all these years because he trusts his instincts and right now they’re telling him _something_ is wrong here. “The Hunger might have set up shop _because_ this manufacturer was close by. Maybe they wanted access. What, exactly, do they make?”

Barry pulls a face. “Officially they manufacture smart toys — dolls that let you check on your kids while you’re at work, that kind of thing — but, uh, _really_ what they’re making are nanny cams. Discrete objects with tiny cameras embedded in them that let you watch what people are doing in your home remotely. You can see why the U.S. military might want to invest in some small, discrete, wifi-enabled camera tech. You don’t even need any specific equipment — you can control it all from an app on your phone.”

Kravitz lived through during the Cold War — in some ways, it was his heyday. “I know _exactly_ why a number of organizations would be interested in that kind of tech, yes,” he agrees. “You know, that used to be my _job_. People didn’t go around planting bugs on themselves.”

Barry snorts in amusement. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, Krav. Anyway, if this _is_ the Hunger, you think they’re after the same thing the military is?”

The Hunger has already proven they want to be able to monitor the world. To watch, and change it in their own image. This seems like a roundabout way of doing it, but if there’s something in Jersey City that will let whoever’s attacking the office access the U.S. military’s cameras — that’s _definitely_ worth causing a fuss this close to Avengers headquarters.

“Either they’re after the same thing or they want to infiltrate the military’s program,” Kravitz says, hanging Barry back his tablet so he can start strapping knives in place. “Either way — and even if this _isn’t_ the Hunger — we need to stop them.”

#

It doesn’t take long to get to Elizabeth from the tower via helijet — the only reason to fly is to avoid the traffic getting out of Manhattan — and when they do, the building has emptied out. The fire alarm is blaring and the parking lot is full of confused employees who look both excited and alarmed to see a Helijet land before the fire department has even arrived.

Barry puts his faceplate down. He’s not good with crowds in close quarters, but the Iron Man suit means those crowds don’t need to know he’s nervous. Kravitz has gone still and impassive beside him, full Reaper mode. “You gonna be okay navigating the crowd?” Barry asks.

“I’m an infamous assassin. The U.S. Senate is scared to arrest me,” Kravitz says. “I think I’ll be okay. There could be Hunger agents in the crowd, though — be careful.”

Barry’s the one wearing a suit of armour, but then again, Kravitz probably knows three different ways to kill him despite its protection. It’s good for Barry not to get too complacent about how safe he is. “You too,” he says, and opens the door to the jet. “I’ll meet you at the front door. I’m going to do a fly over and get a sense of the scene. Comms check?”

Kravitz slides an earpiece in and nods. “Comms go.”

Barry flashes Kravitz a thumbs up and then steps out of the jet and takes off. He feels kind of guilty about leaving Kravitz to wade through the crowd on his own, but Barry gets stopped for a lot more selfies than Kravitz does and they’re working now. If the Hunger is inside this building, they _really_ don’t have time to shake hands.

If the Hunger is inside the building, Barry feels like people should be running — should be _some_ kind of panicked about being attacked. Instead, they’re milling around like this is an _inconvenience_ — an unexpected fire drill in the middle of the word day. Lucretia wouldn’t send them out here to deal with a fire alarm though.

“These people seem way too calm,” Barry says, circling the crowd. It’s easy to see where Kravitz is in it, because people part around him like the Red Sea. “Lucretia sent us out here to deal with an attack, so where is it?”

“Situation,” Kravitz corrects, under his breath. “Her exact phrasing was _situation_.”

Barry might have jumped to the worst possible scenario. He expected more... aliens from the sky or something. He knows everything can’t be the apocalypse — he’s _glad_ it isn’t — but this doesn’t seem like an Avengers-worthy situation. “Maybe Lucretia’s getting revenge on us for siding with Lup.”

“Maybe,” Kravitz agrees, although Barry had mostly been joking. “Hold on. Let me try something.” Kravitz stops walking. “Ma’am,” he says, voice suddenly much more deferential and polite, “can you tell me what you saw inside?”

The woman Kravitz is talking to has greying brown hair and is wearing a fuzzy green sweater. From the air, that’s all Barry can make out. Kravitz must have done a really good job banishing his whole Reaper thing, because she sounds downright cheerful when she responds to him. “I think someone pulled the fire alarm. I don’t think we _need_ the Avengers for this.”

“The security system is going haywire,” says a man, standing on Kravitz’s other side. “The fire department can’t _not_ come check it out, but we told them it’s a false alarm — everything’s going off. The team from the alarm company came right away, though. They said it shouldn’t take them long to shut it off, but we had to leave. Fire code. Do we have a line to the _Avengers_ in our building?”

Some part of Barry had been hoping this _was_ just Lucretia messing with them. He lands by the entrance to the building, peering over the crowd to where Kravitz is standing with his two witnesses. “Well, _that_ doesn’t sound suspicious at all,” he says. “Guess Lucretia was right.”

“Thank you, that’s very helpful,” says Kravitz. “We’re like the fire department — we have to take a look, even if it’s nothing.”

Barry waits as Kravitz navigates his way out of the crowd, raising his faceplate again. “I was feeling overdressed, but _now_ …”

Kravitz nods, eyes fixed on the doors like he expects Hunger agents to come pouring out of it. “Security showing up right as the alarms go off is too convenient.”

“Should have trusted Lucretia.” Barry lets Kravitz lead the way into the building. He may be the one in a suit of armour, but Kravitz has actual training. He follows behind, flying a foot above the ground because it’s quieter than walking while he’s in the suit — although with the alarms blaring around them, it’s probably not necessary to mask his footsteps. “At least they won’t be able to hear us coming.”

“If they’re in the security system, they know we’re here,” Kravitz says, drawing his gun now that they’re inside and not in front of a crowd of civilians. “Cameras.”

Right. Barry should probably have been the one who pointed that out. He’s the one running a high-tech security system in the tower. He knows _exactly_ the kind of thing government agencies use micro-cameras for because Hallwinter Industries used to supply them with early versions of the equipment he uses in the tower. His company might be researching sustainable tech and pushing other companies to go green now, but Barry knows the Hallwinters still have a lot to answer for.

There’s a clatter down the hall, followed by a loud crash — Barry exchanges a glance with Kravitz and Kravitz takes off running, Barry flying hot on his heels. His faceplate slides down just as they enter a small server room at the end of the hall. He’s expecting a team — a dozen Hunger agents ready to spring into action. Instead, the only people inside are a short white guy in a grey button-up that passes as a security uniform, crouched in front of a laptop, and, standing in front of him, something wearing the same shirt that _looks_ like a man, except it just put its fist _through_ a server bank and its eyes are glowing an bright, unnatural, LED red.

Barry can’t help himself. “Is that a _robot?_ ”

The — presumably — human man’s head jerks around to look at them and he swears under his breath. “Scout, forget the servers. Get _them._ ”

Barry raises a hand, palm out, and blasts the robot — scout? — in the chest a split second after Kravitz fires his gun, aiming at the thing’s head. The scout makes no attempt to dodge, taking the hits and shaking them off. It strides towards Kravitz and Barry with slow, even steps, like the singed hole in his shirt and then new dent in his forehead don’t bother him at all.

“Did the Hunger build a _Terminator_?” Barry asks. A bullet leaving nothing but a dent behind, sure, fine — his blaster should have done _something_. He squares his shoulders. “I’ll handle him. You get the other guy.”

“Deal,” says Kravitz, holstering his gun. He looks like he’s planning on getting to the agent _through_ robot-scout, so Barry decides to risk finding out exactly how strong the Hunger’s robot is and ditches strategic thinking in favor of flying straight for it.

It works in that the scout doesn’t go after Kravitz. It _doesn’t_ in that the scout is _very_ strong, turns out. It grabs Barry’s arm and tosses him into the second bank of servers in the room — the one the scout _didn’t_ put his fist through — like Barry weigh nothing at all.

The metal shelf and casing buckle under the force of Barry hitting them. Barry _really_ hopes they invested in cloud backups because if not Hallwinter Industries is going to have to donate some money to nanny cams.

“That’s really not good for the computers here,” Barry says, jerking himself free from what’s left of the shelf. “You should know that, bud. They’re your people.”

The scout doesn’t respond, just lunges towards him again again. Barry fires two blasts this time — one aimed for the robot’s chest, one at the face. They hit, but don’t change the robot’s momentum. It still hits Barry like a ton of bricks, slamming him into the shelf again.

It’s like getting tackled by a battering ram. The scout is heavier than a normal man his size. Even _through_ the Iron Man suit, Barry’s ribs cry out in protest as he’s crushed against the mental and plastic server bank and the screen on the inside of his helmet flickers momentarily.

This is really _not_ going well for him.

JARVIS’s mechanical voice comes through over the comms. “Sir, if I may make a suggestion?” Lights flicker over Barry’s line of vision, white targeting circles highlights the joints in the robots body. “These should be the machine’s weak points.”

“I’m lucky I made you so smart,” Barry says, and squeezes his hand into a fist, letting out a volley of small targeted projectiles — like mini-missiles — aimed for the robot’s joints. It might be able to take brute force attacks and blasts of heat, but it’s _got_ to have some weak points.

“You are, sir,” JARVIS agrees, as the missiles his home and explode.

The robot stumbles, freezing up because what machine could possibly be designed to take that kind of force? Barry shoves it back, raising his left hand and aiming a quick volley of blasts at its eyes. A humanoid robot doesn’t _need_ to see out of its eye sockets, but Barry’s betting whoever tried to make it pass for a person really _committed_.

Even if they didn’t, getting rid of the thing’s glowing red eyes is gonna make it less creepy, and Barry supports that.

The robot’s head snaps back at an unnatural angle and it’s right knee gives out in a shower of sparks, throwing it off balance. It careens to the side, twitching unnaturally and falling to the floor in a heap. Barry whirls around — arm steady, palm out — ready to help Kravitz.

Kravitz, who doesn’t need his help.

Kravitz has his fist wrapped in the man’s grey shirt and the hilt of one of his many knives shoved into his mouth. He grips the knife carefully, forcing the man to bare his neck and look up, at Kravitz’s face.

“Hey, Krav? Whatcha doing?” Barry asks, raising his faceplate. He doesn’t want to say it looks like a sex thing, but it kind of looks like a sex thing.

“He works for the Hunger,” Kravitz says, not breaking the staring contest he’s having with the man in his grasp. “He tried to break his cyanide capsule.”

“They don’t _really_ —” Barry cuts himself off. They _must_ really do that or Kravitz wouldn’t be locked in a staring contest with the Hunger’s most unlucky IT guy. It’s 2014. Somehow it feels like the Hunger should have updated from cyanide. “Oh.”

“Exactly,” says Kravitz. “We need to —”

The agent in Kravitz’s grasps slams his head forward suddenly, loosening Kravitz’s hold just enough that Kravitz’ is forced to let go of the man’s shirt or be stabbed with his own knife. Kravitz keeps hold of the blade, but the man bites down on the hilt with _feeling_ and then there’s no point in Kravitz’s holding onto him anymore.

Kravitz yanks his knife free in disgust. “You’re killing yourself for a cause that’s _dying_ ,” he says. “This is _meaningless_. The Hunger is over.”

“The Hunger is endless,” says the man, grinning up at Kravitz as his mouth starts to foam, eyes burning with self-righteous conviction. “We are ascendant. We — we —”

Cyanide is a fast acting poison. Barry watches the man twitch and die, his eyes rolling back in his head as he collapses to the floor.

Kravitz wipes off his knife and sheaths it, giving the body an annoyed look. “Can you get anything off his laptop?”

“Maybe,” Barry says, rolling his shoulders. Now that the adrenaline from the fight is fading, he can feel bruises forming where he hit the shelf. He’s not a supersoldier. He’s going to need to ice those when they get home. The laptop is still open, shoved into the corner of the room. Its screen is black, but the machine is intact, which is promising. “It’s probably encrypted, but I can crack it. Pick it up and we’ll —” The fire alarm that Barry had stopped noticing suddenly switches off and he looks up, surprised. “I guess we’ll go explain to the fire department that there’s a robot and dead body in the server room.”

“Great,” says Kravitz, bending down to pick up the laptop. “I’ll take the fire department. _You_ get to explain to this tech company that a robot threw you through their servers.”

#

After Barry and Kravitz leave, Lup takes the half-eaten croissant from Taako’s hand and places it on a plate, getting off the couch to clean up their coffee cups and do the dishes by hand. She’s got a dishwasher, but the dishes are a good distraction. Part of her wants to ask JARVIS if she can see the mission briefing, but if she’s really going to take a break from Cap stuff, she should go cold turkey — she’ll be backseat superhero-ing otherwise and Barry might find it cute, but it’ll drive Kravitz crazy.

She needs to not obsess over Taako’s sleep habits too, though, and it doesn’t leave her with a whole lot of stuff to _do_. Lup would normally go work out or leave the tower… bug Barry or Krav. None of those are options, and okay, maybe she’s not _great_ at the whole vacation thing if one mission into saying she’s taking a break she’s thinking about when she’ll feel comfortable going back to it.

Lup’s smart enough to realize this is probably a sign she _needs_ a break, but still — it’s hard and bothering Taako to _wake up_ again is looking like a pretty good use of her time.

If sleep is helping Taako’s brain, though, she should let him be. Lup sits at the kitchen table and just kind of… watches him. She still can’t believe he’s _here_. That this is real. One day, she hopes, it’ll be like she and Taako were never apart, but right now everything is still new and slightly surreal.

But, like, in a good way.

“Captain,” says JARVIS, electronic voice soft in deference to Taako’s sleeping form. “It seems that Dr. Highchurch overestimated how long his interdimensional task would take to complete. He has… arrived on the eighth floor and is negotiating his way to the elevators. Shall I let him know he’s early?”

Lup isn’t sure how _tomorrow_ became _an hour_ or how Merle arrived on the eighth floor, but most of the time where Merle’s concerned, it’s better to just accept things. And saying “no” when Merle’s here _now_ will probably mean another week of waiting before he thinks it’s tomorrow.

“No, send him up,” she says. “Maybe being Sorcerer Supreme means you speak Russian.”

“I’m happy to translate for the Sergeant,” JARVIS says. “I’ll direct Dr. Highchurch to your apartment.”

“Thanks JARVIS,” Lup says. “That’s —”

A golden circle appears in the air in front of her and through it, Merle, standing beside a very confused looking woman in a grey skirt suit, grins at Lup. “Hey, Cap!” he says, stepping through the portal. “Forgot about time zones. Sorry about that.”

Lup opens her mouth to apologize to the bewildered Hallwinter Industries worker who was probably just trying to make sure Merle found the elevators safely, but the portal snaps shut behind Merle before she can get a word out. Merle brushes off his aloha shirt with his wooden prosthetic arm, like maybe it got some interdimensional portal grime on it, and grins up at her. “I’m here to get a look at that brain.”

“Taako’s sleeping, but we can wake him up. He’s sleeping a lot, actually, do you think —” Lup pauses, processing Merle’s words. “Wait, dimensions have _time zones?_ ”

“Of course,” says Merle. “You don’t expect everything to run on Eastern standard time, do you?”

Merle… has a point. It would probably be weirder if time _did_ line up perfectly between dimensions. “Kravitz isn’t here. He and Barry were called out to deal with Avengers stuff in Jersey, but JARVIS can translate for us,” she says, walking over to the couch to prod Taako awake. “He seems okay except for the Russian thing — he’s still _Taako_ , you know? Taako, but not speaking the right language.”

“Sure,” says Merle. “His brain looks like someone hit it with a taser and then decided to see what an egg beater would do, just in case that wasn’t enough. I’m not surprised he’s not making every neural connection he tries. Hell, I’m surprised he’s even up and moving!”

Lup doesn’t know what Merle was like _before_ he gained access to cosmic magic powers and quit the medical profession, but she really hopes his lack of bedside manner is just him being rusty at needing to soften the blow. “Thanks, Merle. That’s very reassuring for me, Taako’s sister who loves him.”

She shakes Taako’s shoulder, snatching her hand back as Taako’s left arm shoots up, metal hand grabbing at the air where her arm had been a moment before. Taako makes a grumpy sound, opening his eyes and blinking up at her, and then Merle. He frowns. “Lup, there’s a weird old man in a neon shirt here,” he says, in English. “What happened to Barold and spy boy? Where’d my croissant go?”

“I thought you said he was Russian?” Merle looks up at Lup. “Sounds pretty American to me.”

“Holy shit, Taako! You’re fixed!” Lup grins, restraining herself from doing something embarrassing like hugging him in front of Merle. “You’re speaking English.”

Taako gives her a surprised look. “I am?”

“Definitely English, babe,” she confirms. “I can understand you.”

“Fuck yeah,” says Taako. “No weird interdimensional doctors needed. I’ve got this under control.”

“So taking a nap worked?” Merle asks, looking Taako over. Lup’s not sure what he can actually assess when Taako’s bundled up on the couch in pajamas, her stolen hoodie, and a blanket, but Merle can flip through dimensions and has magic — who is she to judge? “I told you to try turning him off and on again.”

She is realizing she maybe should have filled Merle in on more of the Winter Soldier-specific details of Taako’s brain before waking Taako up though. Taako scowls.

“I’m not a _machine_ ,” Taako says. “I took a _nap_. That’s something _people_ do.” He raises his hand again, wiggling metal fingers at Merle. “You think just because I’ve got a metal arm I’m a robot? Fuckin’ _rude_ for a doctor.”

Merle raises his right hand and wiggles four wooden fingers back at Taako. “Nah,” he says. “Although I wouldn’t mind being part tree — might be fun. I didn’t know you had a prosthetic. Makes sense. You served, right? Me, I was army medical.” Merle takes a seat beside Taako on the couch. “I’m here to talk about your brain, but I’ve got a feeling I’m missing out on some important information here. I’m Merle, Sorcerer Supreme.”

“That sounds fake,” says Taako, eyes fixed on Merle’s hand. “I’m Taako. Is that _real_ wood? How does it work?”

“Magic,” Merle says, waggling his eyebrows. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

Taako scoffs, but doesn’t look away. “Magic’s not _real_.”

Lup can tell _magic_ has Taako hooked — suspicious, but interested enough not to leave. Maybe interested enough to actually talk about his brain and how it’s betraying him. “Merle, do you want a coffee?”

“Mavis says I should be drinking green tea. Better for my health,” says Merle. “So yes, I’d love some.”

#

Taako doesn’t want to like Merle. Merle is an old man who called him a machine and is wearing a shirt so loud it hurts Taako’s eyes. Merle’s a _doctor_ and Taako has nothing but bad associations with those now. Everything in Taako is _primed_ not to like the weird old dude sipping from a cup of coffee and flipping through both old and new scans of his brain like that’s not the inside of Taako’shead on display.

Except Merle has magic — _real_ magic — and that’s kind of a game changer.

Taako’s eyes are on Merle’s wood hand and his four weird, wooden fingers, wrapped around his mug, as Merle looks through the scans. “Can you turn people into frogs?”

“Never tried it,” Merle says, without looking up from the tablet. “Might take some practice, but I think I could pull it off.”

“I don’t think you can turn people into frogs. That’s fake,” Taako says, even though he’s not _sure_. “Show me some magic.”

Merle _does_ look up when Taako says that. “Want me to turn _you_ into a frog?”

“No!” says Taako, scowling at the weird old man and his wood hand. “I’m _traumatized_. You can’t make me a frog too.”

“Your brain _is_ deep-fried swiss cheese,” Merle agrees, setting his mug and tablet on the coffee table. “The fact that all you’re doing is sometimes fluently speaking a second language is pretty impressive. I’m honestly not sure how the hell you’re alive.”

“Serum,” says Lup, taking a seat on Merle’s other side. “So is this — is it _good?_ I mean, his brain looks better now than it did before, right?”

“It’s still deep-fried swiss cheese,” Merle says. “That’s not a _normal_ state for a brain to be in.” He shakes his wood hand and one of his fingertips lights up. “I’m gonna do a few quick tests. Nothing invasive. I just want to see if things look semi-normal from the outside. Taako, look at me?”

Taako’s first instinct is to shut his eyes, but Lup’s _right there_ and she looks so hopeful. Plus, Merle just made his hand _light up_ and Taako’s intrigued. He shifts on the couch so he’s facing Merle. “So how does magic work?”

“Oh, you know. Draw my powers from mystical entities and make use of some power magical artifacts. Befriended the hand when I came back to New York.” Merle holds it, shining the light into Taako’s eyes.

“That makes no sense,” Taako says, trying not to squint. He follows the light as Merle slowly moves it back and forth in front of his face. “Can _anyone_ do magic?”

“Sure, just takes a sojourn to a city in the middle of nowhere and a few years of training. Gotta want it badly enough and make a connection with the right mystical entity. I’m in good with Pan.” Merle pauses. “Pupillary response looks normal. Got any weird numbness or tingling?”

Magic sounds hard. Magic sounds disappointingly like _work_.

“Can’t feel my left arm,” Taako says, sarcastically, and then pauses because, actually, that’s not right. He _can_ feel it and control pressure with it, just not the same way he does with his right arm. “I mean, I _can_ , but… you know.” He holds up his left hand. “It’s different. Kind of weird? I don’t think about it a lot. I can _sort of_ feel things.”

“Cool,” says Merle, switching off the light on his finger. “Some kind of neural interfacing. That explains a few of the areas of scarring in your scans — your brain’s got to be connected to the arm somehow. What about sensitivity to noise and light? Any of that?”

Taako’s… not sure. “Dunno,” he says. “Don’t think so? Mostly I’ve been sleeping.”

“Is that weird?” Lup asks, cutting in. “He’s been sleeping a _lot_. He’s awake for a couple hours at a time between naps, but then he sleeps again. Should I be waking him up? You’re supposed to keep people awake when they’ve got a brain injury, right?”

Merle shakes his head. “Not unless they’re slurring their words or showing other signs of serious brain damage. And don’t get me wrong. Taako should be comatose at the very _least_ , but considering everything else… sleep’s probably what you want him to be doing right now. Sleep helps the brain recover because it’s not working as hard anymore. I’d let him be.”

Taako’s changed his mind. This is good, actually, and so is Merle. “So I can nap as much as I want?” he asks. “Just, whenever?”

Merle picks his coffee up again. “You should probably give yourself _some_ stimulation, but yeah. I don’t know how the supersoldier serum works or how you’re not dead, but if you were normal I’d tell you to take it easy and get lots of rest. Limit screen time and reading so you don’t tax your brain too much. You know, the usual.”

“Pretty sure _the usual_ was ‘walk it off’ when I was in the army,” Taako says, after a beat. “For the Winter Soldier it was definitely get your brain fried and then get stuck in a freezer for a few years until we need to kill someone important again.”

“Welcome to the twenty-first century, kid,” Merle says, without batting an eye. “We’ve made a few improvements.” He waves his hand again and pulls, from thin air, a cherry red lollipop. “Here, for being a good patient.”

“I’m not a _kid_ ,” Taako says, reaching out to take the lollipop anyway because _magic lollipop._ “What flavour?”

“Strawberry,” Merle says. “They’re my son’s favorite.”

“ _I_ want one too,” says Lup. “Can you do grape?”

Merle waves his hand again, summoning sugar from nowhere, and holds out a purple lollipop for Lup to take. Which doesn’t seem fair — _she’s_ not the one with brain damage.

“I think your brain’s gonna be okay,” Merle says. “It doesn’t look great, but given everything else and your level of awareness, I feel safe saying that, somehow, your brain is healing itself. It’s gonna fuck up sometimes because brains are stupid, but it’s going a pretty good job of patching itself up. If you experience any sudden changes — disorientation, sudden memory loss, slurring of words, changes in your vision or hearing or with _any_ of your senses — call me. Don’t know if I’ll be able to do anything about it, but it doesn’t hurt to try.”

“I feel like my whole _thing_ is proof that sometimes trying shit _does_ hurt, actually,” Taako says, popping the lollipop into his mouth. “Considering my brain is fucked.”

Merle shrugs. “It’s already fucked. I won’t fuck it worse.”

“But Taako’s brain is mostly okay, right?” Lup asks, sounding like she’s holding back a _lot_ of emotion. Taako burrows back into his blanket. It’s not like he doesn’t know Lup loves him, but he can _hear_ it in her tone of voice and that’s a lot. “He’s getting better. For sure. Doctor’s opinion.”

“Technically, I’m not a doctor anymore,” Merle says, “but yes, looks like he’s healing to me. I can’t see why he wouldn’t eventually heal all the damage, given the progress he’s made so far.”

All the damage. All of it healing means that Taako’s going to get his _memories_ back. It means Taako will be… himself. He’ll know about his childhood. Everything he and Lup shared together.

The war.

The Soldier.

Getting back _all_ of his memories is a double-edged sword, but Lup looks so _happy_ with her purple lollipop that Taako can’t even really regret the hell he’s got coming for him when all of the Soldier’s memories of torture and murder and being frozen and unfrozen and not being _him_ come back. He’ll deal with that when it happens.

There’s a knock on the apartment door and Barry steps inside, still dressed in the Iron Man suit, looking a little banged up. “JARVIS said Merle was — hi Merle. You’re early. I brought Kravitz in case you need a translator.”

“I’m good,” Taako says. “I fixed _myself_ and Merle says everyone has to let me nap as much as I want now.”

Kravitz pauses in the doorway of the apartment when he hears Taako speaking English — like maybe he’s going to back out and leave — then looks at Lup and commits to following Barry inside. He’s dressed in a tight black outfit with lots of leather strappy bits holding knives and has a gun on his hip. Taako sees why Lup likes him. It’s good to have hot friends. “The exam went well?”

“Merle thinks Taako’s going to be fine,” Lup says, beaming up at Barry and Kravitz. “He thinks he’ll make a full recovery.”

“That’s great,” Barry says, smiling back at Lup and crossing the room so he can lean in and give her a kiss. He turns to look at Taako. “I’m happy for you, Taako. It must be a relief.”

“Yeah, I mean, little from column A, little from column B,” Taako says, shrugging. “I’m healing and I got a lollipop, but I’m gonna remember _all_ of the shit I did as the Winter Soldier. That’s gonna be fucked up.”

“All of it?” Kravitz repeats. He looks… apprehensive, maybe. Kravitz isn’t hard for Taako to read, but even he’s not sure what the look on Kravitz’s face means. “Are you sure?”

“No,” says Merle, getting up off the couch. He pulls _another_ lollipop out of nowhere — orange — and hands it to Barry. “But as soon as the supersoldier serum start happening, we’re just playing Calvinball with science. My best guess is that everything’s gonna fix itself eventually — or near enough that it doesn’t matter. I should go see Mavis and Mookie. I’m not sure how long I’ve been gone, but it’s _probably_ my turn to get them for a weekend by now.”

“I can’t believe you’re a _sorcerer_ and you’re a _deadbeat dad_ ,” says Taako, attention back on Merle. “Are you gonna be in this dimension when my brain goes fucky again?”

“Probably,” Merle says. He walks over to Kravitz, sizes him up, and then produces another red lollipop for him. “You never know when there’ll be another worm emergency.”

“Worm-ergency,” Lup says, under her breath. “Thanks for coming, Merle.”

“Don’t mention it. Especially not to the medical board.” Merle draws a circle in the air with his hand, sparks of golden light falling from it, and suddenly Taako can see _outside_ through a _portal_ that Merle just made in the middle of the living room. “They’re always on my ass about how I don’t have a _license_ anymore and I can’t just _treat people_ because I”m an Avenger.”

“Won’t, promise,” Lup says, like there isn’t a _portal_ to outside _right there,_ in front of them.

Merle waves as he steps through and it seals up behind him.

“Holy shit,” says Taako. “He’s _magic_.”

“You get used to it,” Barry says. “Sort of.”

“Getting used to magic sounds like the _dumbest_ thing possible. Why would you _want_ that?” Taako asks. “That’s terrible. Lup, your boyfriend is boring.”

“You’re just jealous,” Lup says, sticking her tongue out at Taako. “My boyfriend is _great_. How was Jersey?”

“Weird,” says Barry, unwrapping his lollipop. “We’ll tell you all about it later. We should probably change.”

Kravitz nods, wedging his lollipop into a sheath beside one of his knives. “I need to go clean cyanide off a knife.”

There’s a brief pause. Lup raises her eyebrows, looking from Kravitz to Barry. “Cyanide?”

“It’s nothing,” Kravitz promises. “Someone was trying to do some clean up and got caught. They’re not going to be a problem anymore.”

Taako remembers more than enough to understand what’s not being said. The Hunger had their agents use cyanide capsules lodged inside a fake tooth to escape capture during the war. It had been annoying as fuck, a hallmark of their organization. It means that, despite Taako’s best efforts, the Hunger is still out there and they’re _close_. They’re in _Jersey_.

Taako shoves the thought down and away. It doesn’t matter. He’s done. Retired. He naps and he eats pastries now, that’s _it._ No more fighting. No more _nothing_. Barry and Kravitz can take care of this bullshit — the Winter Soldier has hung up his rifle for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment and kudos if you enjoyed this chapter! They keep us writing. <3
> 
> Apologies for the slight delay posting this chapter! Iz was on a boat and then moving and Allison hurt her wrist, so editing this very long chapter took longer than usual. Hopefully the length makes up for that!
> 
> You can come talk to us on tumblr, where we're [@anonymousAlchemist](http://anonymousAlchemist.tumblr.com) and [@marywhal](http://marywhal.tumblr.com).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Exit Interview](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16048559) by [marywhale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marywhale/pseuds/marywhale)
  * [[Podfic] All the Things You Prayed For](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17492366) by [GoLBPodfics (GodOfLaundryBaskets)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodOfLaundryBaskets/pseuds/GoLBPodfics)




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